


Defined By Each Breath

by devovitsuasartes



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, M/M, Werewolf Stiles Stilinski
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-07
Updated: 2014-01-28
Packaged: 2017-12-25 21:14:29
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 28
Words: 84,249
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/957672
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/devovitsuasartes/pseuds/devovitsuasartes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>One night, one very bad decision and one slip-up from Derek leave Stiles crawling home with a werewolf bite. Caught between pressure from Derek to accept what he is and trying to hide from his father's growing suspicions, Stiles sets out to prove that the only thing it takes to stop being a werewolf is a little self-control.</p><p>A canon-divergent AU set after the season 1 finale.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is probably a bad idea, but here we go anyway. This story will be told from alternating perspectives, and by apparent fandom consensus Stiles' father's name is John until Jeff Davis decides to start giving the Stilinskis real first names.

In this part of the forest it was impossible to see the silver moonlight dappling on the ground, blocked out as it was by the thick leaves on the trees overheard, but at that moment Stiles Stilinski had to pinch himself to prove that he was still human because he could have sworn that he could feel the full moon in his very bones. In reality, the jitteriness he was feeling came from the simple knowledge that he - a hopelessly fragile and breakable human being - was out in the middle of the preserve on a full moon, with at least two werewolves running around, and hadn't told anyone where he was going.

For approximately the fifteenth time that night he considered going home, climbing into his warm bed and getting a blessed three hours or so of sleep to juice himself up for the history pop quiz that was obviously coming tomorrow - today - at school. Stiles could smell pop quizzes, and this one had been stinking up the classroom all week.

There was one problem. Scott had shown up on his doorstep earlier that evening, looking frighteningly on edge with his eyes glowing that awful shade of yellow. He'd simply said, 'Full moon. Need your help.' Then he'd shouldered past Stiles hurriedly and headed upstairs as Stiles' father - who had been walking down the hall to see who was at the door - stared afterwards with that curious detective look that Stiles had recently come to dread on his face.

It had turned out that Allison's dad had taken her out of town to visit relatives for a couple of days (deliberately?) and Scott didn't think he could control himself during the full moon without at least knowing that she was nearby. Stiles had immediately objected to the idea of having Scott wolf out and possibly go crazy inside his house, while his father was there, and had insisted on dragging Scott to the preserve and chaining him to a tree for the night.

'If anyone catches us, we'll say you're an eco-warrior and you're protesting,' Stiles had said, pleased with his brilliant plan.

'But it's a preserve,' Scott had mumbled, sweat beading on his forehead. 'No one's trying to cut the trees down...'

'You're _pre-emptively_ protesting,' Stiles had snapped back, a little deflated.

It had been a brilliant plan. Really. It would have worked out just fine if Scott hadn't... run off while Stiles had his back turned. Leaving Stiles - extremely breakable Stiles - alone in the middle of nowhere with two werewolves running around under the influence of full moon.

They hadn't seen Derek since the murder extravaganza up at the Hale house. Pursuing a friendship with a violent, brooding killer who had just obtained a frankly irresponsible amount of power by ripping out his own uncle's throat hadn't been high on Stiles' list of priorities, and Scott had figured - ha - that he more or less had the whole being-a-werewolf thing under control and didn't need any training from Derek.

Stiles stamped his feet in the mud underfoot, steeled himself, screwed up his face and then yelled at the top of his voice, 'Scott! You out there, buddy?'

If Scott ate him, Stiles was going to be so pissed. Presuming there was enough of him left to _be_ pissed. Being eaten would kill his chances of ever getting into college and his dad would...

The thought of his father was like a stone settling in Stiles' stomach. Whenever he got himself into one of these deadly situations (which was way, _way_ more often than was really healthy for a sixteen year-old) he had a tendency to forget all about what would happen to his dad if he lost a son as well as his wife. Those thoughts usually came later, and the guilt would haunt him for days as visions of his dad - ashen-faced with grief and drinking every drop of liquor in the house and eating junk food because there was no one there to stop him - swam across his brain.

That horrible picture was in Stiles' head now and he finally thought _to hell with Scott_. His friend could take care of himself - probably better than anyone else in Beacon Hills right now except Derek Hale - and Stiles needed to get home.

Sighing, he unwrapped the heavy length of chain that they'd brought from around the base of the tree, wrapped it into a loop again and slung it across his shoulder like a satchel. Scott had carried it during their initial hike into the woods, and not for the first time Stiles thought about what might have happened if he'd taken Peter Hale up on his offer. He wouldn't have to suffer through crippling back-ache for the rest of the day, but then again Derek might just have killed him for siding with the enemy.

Stiles began trudging back through the forest, grumbling and cussing under his breath as the cold metal dug into his shoulder and the side of his neck. He had made it about a kilometre before he heard the howling.

He froze on the spot. He stopped grumbling. He wished that he had never started. He thought about the fact that, amongst all the fleet-footed rabbits and deer, he was probably the easiest piece of prey to catch in Beacon Hills Preserve tonight.

Stiles started walking again, quickly now, a half-jog. After a few paces he decided that he didn't value the chain more than his life and shrugged it off his body, wincing as it crashed to ground in a cacophany of colliding metal. Stiles heard the thundering of something - paws? hooves? both? - coming closer and he started to run, faster than he ever had on the lacrosse field.

His limbs burned and his breath wheezed in his chest, but the sounds were only coming closer. Stiles kept glancing behind him - first his left shoulder, then his right - to try and catch a glimpse of whatever it was. He was just glancing back to the left when the deer appeared out of nowhere on his right flank and crashed into him solidly.

The hoof in his side broke one of Stiles' ribs - he felt it happen. Then he and the deer were tangled on the ground in a panicked, thrashing pile and more hooves hit him in the face and legs and who ever knew that deer could get this big?

Before Stiles could fight it off, the deer kicked him one last time in the stomach to push itself back to standing and then bounded off gracefully into the trees, disappearing from sight. Stiles groaned, trying to clutch at all the bits of himself that hurt and then realising that he didn't have enough hands.

'Thanks. That was great. Just what I needed,' he moaned to the deer through gritted teeth, though it was long gone, as he tentatively began to push himself back upright. Already he was wondering how the hell he was going to explain all these very visible injuries to his dad. Overzealous lacrosse practice? Probably wouldn't work. He was pretty sure there was a hoof-shaped bruise on his forehead.

Vainly trying to pat the mud off his favorite T-shirt, Stiles noticed that some of it felt weirdly different. Slicker, more fluid. Frowning, he held up a hand in front of his face and tried to figure out what it was in the gloomy light.

He smelled it first, and his stomach lurched. He hadn't smelled that since the night that Kate and Peter had died.

The deer had been injured. It had been bleeding. The deer had been bleeding deer blood. Stiles was covered in deer blood. The deer had been bleeding. Something had injured the deer. Something had...

Stiles heard soft footsteps nearby. There was no growling, just the silence of a predator stalking its wounded prey with a quiet confidence. Finally on his feet again, Stiles swallowed hard and turned slowly, turned to meet the red eyes and the awful, enormous black thing that they belonged to.

He tried to run. He got less than twenty feet.

* * *

John had knocked half-heartedly on his son's door and yelled that it was time to get up, before quickly hurrying downstairs to eat a leftover croissant before Stiles could come downstairs and confiscate it. Really, who was the parent in this living situation anyway?

He'd tried saying those exact words in the past, but then Stiles would sigh and start making a speech about John's heart and his cholesterol and his heart and his blood pressure, and John would read between the lines and hear the genuine concern and fear in his son's voice and understand, without it being spoken aloud, the reason behind the kid's desperate attempts to get him to eat healthier.

John guiltily heated the croissant in the microwave, then sliced it open and put some butter inside. It began to melt instantly and his mouth started watering at the sight of it.

Maybe Stiles wouldn't notice. He had been distracted and distant - staying out later after school and not looking John in the eye as he hastily explained where he'd been, without being asked. He was keeping secrets. Perhaps that was normal for a teenager. Who knew - John had only ever raised one.

He looked miserably at the croissant, and then sighed like a martyr and tipped it into the recycling box under the sink, where it would be tainted by old coffee grounds and leftover green beans and rendered inedible. Overhead he heard a scuffle and eventually a thump as Stiles finally rolled out of bed, then the sound of him barging out of his bedroom, padding up the hall, and slamming into the bathroom.

Forty minutes later, when he was still in there and already late for school, John walked up to the door for the third time and banged on it with his fist.

'Stiles!' he barked.

There was a pause. A muttered swear word. Then, ' _What?_ '

'Did you fall in?'

'Ha-ha.' Stiles sounded sardonic, but his voice was thin and stretched and shaking a little and John set his mouth in a grim line. He made an effort to soften his voice.

'Are you sick?' he asked, trying to convey in the tone that he wasn't just going to automatically believe any affirmative. He'd been a parent for a while, after all, and he'd dealt with more than one fake illness.

For a long time there was no answer. John raised a fist to bang on the door again but it opened abruptly, revealing Stiles standing there in his tatty old bathrobe, droplets of water clinging to the bristles on his head, looking a little fractious but otherwise completely healthy.

'Finally. I thought-' John caught the scent of lemon in the air and frowned. 'Did you clean the bathroom?'

'Dad, I'm late for school!' Stiles pushed past him without answering the question and hurried down the hall to his bedroom, slamming the door behind him again. Stiles slammed doors a lot - he didn't even seem to realise that he did it.

John looked disbelievingly from his son's bedroom door to the squeaky-clean bathroom in front of him. Then he shook his head and walked back downstairs. Of all the things Stiles had been doing in recent weeks, cleaning the bathroom was neither the strangest nor the most unwelcome.

Ten minutes later he came bounding down the stairs again, dressed and wearing his backpack slung over his shoulder and...

'Dear God!' John exclaimed, leaning back from where he had stood up to say goodbye to his son, his eyes watering. 'Is that my aftershave?'

Stiles tutted and rushed past. 'Bye, Dad.'

'How much did you put on? That stuff isn't cheap...'

'Bye, Dad.' Stiles pulled the door open with more force than was necessary. John followed him down the hall, feeling more than a little wrongfooted.

'Stiles, you don't even shave yet!'

' _Bye_ , Dad.'

Stiles closed the front door behind him. Thoroughly confused, John watched his slightly distorted form through one of the glass panels as Stiles took a detour on the way to his Jeep. The kid pulled his backpack off his shoulder and reached into it, yanking out something that looked like a brown grocery bag. He took the lid off one of the trashcans at the end of their driveway and shoved the item down into it, forcing it down almost angrily so that it was buried under the rest of the trash. Then he slung the lid back onto the recepticle and ran to his Jeep, climbing in and driving away.

John waited until the vehicle had rounded the corner at the end of the road before determinedly stepping out of the house himself and marching down the driveway. He had his arm in amongst the trashbags up to his elbow when he noticed their elderly neighbour, Mrs Johnson, standing on the sidewalk about ten foot away with an affronted expression.

John's hand closed around the grocery bag and he forced a grin at her as he pulled it out and hurriedly hid it behind his back, trying to look casual. 'Morning,' he said courteously, before slamming the lid back on the trashcan and hurrying back inside the house.

It was a testament to how wound up he was feeling that John didn't bother to wash his hands before opening up the grocery bag and tipping the contents onto the kitchen table. He picked them up, first one and then the other, and his expression slowly turned from curiosity to horror.

Inside the bag was a pair of jeans and Stiles' favourite T-shirt, the one with the band logo on it that presumably made Stiles look hip or cool or... something. The material was white, and so the drying bloodstains stood out on it in a stark contrast. They were mixed in with mud and grass stains, but John would recognise that substance anywhere. There was a lot of it.

John put his hand inside the shirt and spread his fingers, draping the material over his film. His fingertips poked through the ragged holes in the T-shirt and he swallowed hard.

Then he went to wash his hands.


	2. Chapter 2

'Stiles. Stiles. _Stiles_.'

Stiles clenched his jaw firmly and ignored the repeated hiss of his name.

'Stiles? Stiles. Stiles Stiles Stiles Stiles...'

'Is there a _problem_ , Mr. McCall?' Ferguson demanded loudly from his spot by the blackboard, pushing his glasses up his nose to ensure that the red mark across the bridge of it would remain fresh and glaring down the rows of desks to where Scott McCall had looked up, his expression surprised as though he'd forgotten that other people have ears.

'Uh, no sir. Sorry, sir.'

'Actually, there is a problem.' Ferguson tapped the board with his chalk before holding it out. 'This quadratic equation, to be more precise, which you've just kindly volunteered to solve for me.'

Stiles heard Scott's heartrate pick up a little in panic at being confronted with the prospect of trying to solve a math problem in front of the whole class and the inevitable public humiliation that would follow. Stiles ignored the fact that he could hear this. He ignored the fact that he could hear a squirrel grinding at a piece of bark on the tree outside. He was planning to ignore just about everything that he knew he shouldn't be able to hear.

When Scott was slow to stand up Ferguson marched over to shove the chalk forcefully into his hand. As he passed Stiles he stopped and wrinkled his nose. 'Stilinski,' he drawled in his I-have-the-power-to-embarrass-you-and-I-love-exercising-it voice. 'Mr Finstock is a friend of mine and so for his sake I'm telling you to leave five minutes early and scrub whatever it is you've doused yourself in off before your Economics class. Go.'

'Good to know you care,' Stiles muttered, grabbing his backpack from the floor and hurrying out of the classroom as fast as he could.

Exactly four and a half minutes later, when he was half-heartedly splashing water around his jawline, Scott burst into the bathroom and, when Stiles refused to turn around, looked mirror-Stiles sincerely in the eye.

'I'm sorry,' he stated in his best pathetic grovelling tone.

Stiles ignored him and grabbed some paper towels to dry himself off. He didn't like being in an enclosed space with Scott. He didn't want his best friend smelling anything that would give him the wrong idea. 'Do you even know what you're saying sorry for?' he asked stiffly.

He didn't have to look at Scott to know that he was wincing. 'Not really? Sorry. I remember we got to the woods and after that...' The sentence trailed away helplessly. 'Did something happen?' he asked tentatively.

Stiles paused by the door, considered for a moment and then replied, 'You ran off and left me to carry that stupid chain all the way back by myself. If all you wanted to do was go running in the woods then why did you have to drag me into it?' His voice cracked a little and Stiles gritted his teeth as he stepped out into the hall, Scott hurrying along behind him.

'Sorry,' he repeated, and Stiles could tell that he genuinely was. He could also tell that his buddy was feeling miserable, and so he sighed and patted Scott on the shoulder, trying not to get too close to him.

'Forget about it. No harm done,' he assured Scott heavily.

Scott nodded. As they continued to walk to their Economics class Stiles heard his friend taking large pulls of air through his nose.

'Uh, Stiles... What are you wearing? Is that aftershave?'

'Yeah, so what? Getting nervous about the fact that I'm going to be the new hot thing in school once girls get a whiff of my manly musk?'

'But you don't even shave.'

Stiles glared sidelong at him. 'I could shave if I wanted to!'

They had a double dose of Coach Finstock first day, which was just fantastic because Stiles could compare and contrast the experience of being berated in Economics with the fun of being yelled at on the lacrosse field.

All day, Stiles had considered skipping lacrosse practice - pretending to have a headache, or a sprained ankle or something. What he needed, what he _really_ needed, was a solid couple of hours in which to have a full-on freakout, maybe even a panic attack, and to just get it out of his system so that he could move on to the plotting stage unhindered.

Stiles hadn't had that yet. He'd had to drag himself back through the preserve, first literally crawling and wondering if he was going to die, then feeling the supremely gross sensation of his broken bones healing and his wounds closing up. When he finally got back to his house the priority had been to clean everything up and hide the evidence, and then it had been time for school and ever since he'd been performing a one-man show called Everything is Normal With Stiles. He wasn't sure what he was going to do when the audience left.

Unfortunately, attending lacrosse practice was a crucial scene that was needed to tie Everything is Normal With Stiles together. Now - today - the day after the full moon, it was more important than ever to behave like absolutely nothing had changed.

Of course it turned out that lacrosse practice was entirely the wrong place to do that, because on the field it quickly became more obvious than ever just how much everything had changed.

'Good job, Bilinski!' Finstock yelled out, with a frankly insulting amount of surprise in his voice, as Stiles caught the ball without thinking and whipped it into the back of the net, Danny taken off guard by how fast it moved and actually flinching a little as it grazed the side of his helmet on the way in.

'Nice!' Scott added, slapping him on the back even though he and Stiles had ended up on separate teams for this practice.

Stiles stood perfectly still, his heart pounding. It had felt _incredible_ , just amazing to react that way, to give his body instructions and have them carried out with pinpoint accuracy and a kind of strength that he had never felt in his muscles before. He could _do_ this. He could own just about everyone on this field. Forget first line, he could beat Jackson into the ground and maybe even make it to co-captain with Scott. He could make his dad proud. He could become cool enough for Lydia to date. Finstock might even learn his real name.

Stiles missed the next catch.

He waited until the ball came his way, and then deliberately swung his lacrosse stick just a few inches too low to catch it. It flew off the pitch and he went running after it, far more slowly than he knew he was capable of, yelling 'Sorry, sorry!' over his shoulder.

Jackson was waiting for him when he got back with the usual sneer on his face. 'You know, Stilinski, you could just try being a little less pathetic,' he muttered as Stiles came close, red-faced and keeping the ball balanced in his stick, feeling his frustration rising. He launched the ball over to Greenberg, deliberately making it a bad pass so that the other kid had to run back a little to catch it, and threw himself back into the game.

It seemed to last forever, and Stiles was on edge the whole time. He saw Scott glance over at him, puzzled, more than once, but Stiles was preoccupied by the need to focus on not letting anything... embarrassing happen. He'd thought the threat of random boners in school was enough of a nightmare, but the idea that he might sprout fangs and extra hair the second he lost his temper was enough to keep him feeling jittery and on edge for the full hour.

It occurred to him in the showers that he hadn't worked up a sweat at all on the field, not even with all the running around and humiliating himself on purpose. Another thing that was out of place, that Scott or anyone who was paying attention might take note of, and wonder what it meant. Stiles gritted his teeth and forced the impending freak-out away for about the hundredth time that day.

To his relief, Scott pulled out his phone as they headed to Stiles' Jeep and a big goofy grin spread across his face.

'Alison's back?' Stiles asked drily.

'She wants to meet up. Out in the preserve.' Scott didn't even bother to hide the glee in his voice.

'Ugh, you know what? Just go. You know how I feel about being reminded that everyone is getting more sex than me.'

Scott bounded off like a puppy and Stiles watched him go, biting his lip. Then he climbed into his Jeep and drove halfway back to his house, pulled over into a deserted rest stop and let the engine day so that all he could hear was his own slightly shaky breaths.

If there was a place to freak out then this was it, but although Stiles could feel the panic like a painful, heavy ball in his chest, it wouldn't come loose. After several of minutes waiting for the screaming and crying to start up organically, Stiles finally gave up and pulled out his phone, switching it on for the first time that day.

He set it on the dashboard and closed his eyes as he listened to the text message alert chime with an influx of all the communications he'd received that day. They came one after the other, and the chiming seemed to go on for quite a long time before it eventually died down. Stiles picked it up and saw that his messages had all come from three different numbers: Scott, his dad and an unknown cell phone.

Scott's messages were all variations on the theme of " _dude r u ok? what happend last nite?_ " There was a single, ominous text from his dad that simply said, " _Come straight home after school. We need to talk_." Stiles took a deep breath and opened the first of the messages from the unknown number.

_"Turn your phone on."_

He snorted in a mixture of anger and weary humour. Why was he not surprised that Derek didn't know how cell phones worked? He thumbed down through the rest of the messages.

" _Are you dead?_ "

" _If you're not dead, turn your phone on_."

" _You can't ignore this, Stiles_."

" _I went to your school and saw your Jeep. I know you're not dead. Call me_."

" _Really? You think this is a good time to play lacrosse?_ "

Stiles nearly jumped out of his skin when the phone started ringing loudly in his hand, the same unknown number flashing up on the screen. He quickly rejected the call and threw the phone into his glovebox where it would be a lot easier to ignore. He gave himself another couple of minutes, trying to dislodge that awful ball of terror from his chest and up into his throat, out into the open, but soon he realised that it wasn't going to happen. Sighing, he started the engine and drove home to face whatever fresh hell was waiting for him them.

* * *

There had been a handful of quizzical looks when John had stated his need to head home a couple of hours early. Things had been mercifully quiet recently, though, so John had handed off to Deputy Graham and driven home with still no real idea of what he was going to say to his son.

He'd considered - seriously considered - bringing the clothes in to have the blood on them analysed, but had decided against it for three reasons. The first was that, despite everything, he wanted to give Stiles a chance to tell him the truth about what had happened and why he'd tried to hide it. Secondly, if Stiles had gotten himself into some kind of trouble that was... that could be on the wrong side of the fence, legally speaking, then John wanted to know about it first so that he could decide what to do. Finally, he was pretty sure that it was Stiles' own blood on the shirt, and if someone had hurt his son then John couldn't be completely sure that he wouldn't do something illegal himself.

Stiles wasn't back yet when John got in, something that he was relieved about. He'd fluctuated between fear and anger all day and had been trying to figure out which emotion it would be best to present when Stiles got in. In the end he just laid the filthy T-shirt out on the kitchen table and leaned back against the counter with his arms folded, trying to calm himself as much as possible.

John heard the Jeep's engine in the driveway and took a deep breath, steeling himself. The front door banged open and Stiles stepped into the kitchen already talking.

'Hey dad, sorry I'm late, I got your message and...'

His voice trailed off as he saw John leaning against the counter, with an expression that must have looked thunderous. Stiles frowned in confusion for a second, then saw his T-shirt on the table. His expression shifted into one of abject terror, then nausea, then forced calm. His eyes flicked from side to side and his adam's apple bobbed in his throat, and John watched in frustration as the all-too-familiar tells of Stiles about to launch into a lie presented themselves in turn.

'Don't,' John said sharply, more forcefully than he had intended. 'I don't think I can deal with you lying to me right now. I have... I have been trying all day to figure out an explanation for what this-' he gestured towards the T-shirt '-is, and how it might have got that way, and why you tried to hide it from me and I've got nothing. So I'm going to ask you some questions and you're going to answer them. Straight away. No lying. OK?'

Stiles hesitated, then straightened up a little in indignation. 'How did you even find this, Dad? Did you go through the trash or something? That's gross...'

'Stiles...'

'It's like you're spying on me or something. Aren't I entitled to a little privacy?'

'When it involves this much blood?' John shot back. 'No.' He took a deep breath and then asked, 'Are you in some kind of trouble?'

Stiles hesitated. 'More than usual or...?'

' _Stiles_.'

'No! No, I'm not in trouble.'

It was a lie. John held back from saying so and asked, softly, 'Are you hurt?'

Stiles looked at his feet, but he answered with what sounded like the truth. 'No. No, I'm not hurt.'

John breathed out through his nose. Not hurt... but in some kind of trouble. It could be worse, he supposed. 'Right. Now, tell me what happened to your shirt and why you tried to hide it from me.'

He expected a lie and he wasn't disappointed. 'Right! Yeah, the shirt. It's... I was making my Halloween costume.'

'Halloween was last month,' John said heavily.

'Right!' Stiles laughed nervously. 'That's what I figured. I got about halfway through making it and I was like, "Wait, I'm not going to be able to use this for, like, a year. Who knows what I'll want to go as by then? People can change..." I mean, _I_ haven't changed. But I could. Not in a radical way but just, like, I'm finding hairs in new places all the time.' He suddenly looked horrified. 'Not a lot of hair! I'm not getting like freak-hairy, I just...'

John scrubbed a hand through his hair in frustration and interrupted his son's ramblings. 'I don't know how to get through to you, Stiles,' he said flatly. He felt helpless, and Stiles could probably hear it in his voice. 'I am running out of ideas to convince you to stop lying to me.'

'I'm not lying!'

'You're grounded.'

Stiles stared at him, wrongfooted, then scowled. 'I'm grounded for what - bleeding?'

John felt his stomach lurch. 'So it is your blood?'

'I didn't say that.'

'Show me your stomach, Stiles.'

'What?' Stiles froze.

John stood up straight, his resolve strengthened by his son's reaction. 'The holes, the blood... it looks like someone attacked you. So if you're not hurt, prove it.'

'God damn!' Stiles swore, scowling. He complied, though, yanking his Captain America T-shirt up to around his armpits and even doing a mock fashion twirl to show off his lean, pale torso that was completely unmarked save for the usual scattering of moles. 'Satisfied?' he demanded, dropping the material again.

John nodded, not trying to disguise his relief. 'Go to your room.'

'I'm not five years old...'

'Stiles I said _go to your room!_ ' He hadn't meant to yell, but it was too late now. Stiles jumped back, closing his mouth hurriedly and looking genuinely upset. Then he settled his face into a glare and stormed upstairs, slamming his bedroom door behind him.

That time, it was definitely deliberate.


	3. Chapter 3

Derek was in Stiles' room, because of _course_ he was.

At another time, Stiles might have had a near heart-attack by the sudden appearance of the grumpy, brooding werewolf standing next to his band posters and piles of unwashed laundry, but he had known that Derek was up there more or less since he'd entered the house. Throughout the extremely uncomfortable conversation with his father Stiles had had one ear listening in to the sounds of the floorboards upstairs creaking slightly and the soft, regular thud of Derek's heartbeat.

Stiles glared hotly at Derek as he stomped into his room and slammed the door shut behind him. He held a finger to his lips as he walked over to his stereo and turned it on, blasting some ska into the room just loud enough to cover their voices, but not loud enough that his dad would come upstairs and yell at him to turn it down.

Derek waited patiently by the open window where he'd come in, watching Stiles' movements intently. It was the first time that Stiles had seen him - in human form, at least - since the Hale house murders, and becoming an Alpha looked like it suited him well. He still looked as surly as ever, but there was an undercurrent of brimming confidence to him now, as though all the fear had been drawn out of him. It was probably easy to feel confident when you were strong enough to crush pretty much any opponent with a single claw.

Stiles, however, was determined not to be intimidated. After all, he was no weakling himself and it wasn't like Derek could do any more damage (OK, besides killing him). He stalked up to Derek, shoved his face very close (luckily Derek was only about an inch taller than him) and hissed, 'Get out.'

Derek raised his eyebrows, unimpressed. 'We need to talk,' he said coolly.

'I have nothing to say to you,' Stiles snapped, trying not to raise his voice too much. 'Haven't you done enough?'

To his surprise, Derek's gaze flickered guiltily. He opened his mouth, as though to apologise, but the words seemed to stick in his throat. Stiles turned away from him in disgust, hoping that if he kept his back turned Derek would eventually just give up and slink back out the window.

It was a vain hope. Derek asked, quietly, as though testing to see if Stiles could hear him over the music, 'How have you been feeling since it happened? Have you been coughing up anything... black blood, anything like that? Any nausea or dizziness?'

'I feel fine,' Stiles replied shortly, in an attempt to shut Derek up. To his irritation, he heard the Alpha approaching him and spun around to fix him with another fierce glower. 'I told you to leave. You don't get to come in here asking questions and... and making demands. You...' He took a deep breath and looked Derek in the eye as he grated out, 'You _bit_ me.'

'It was an accident,' Derek said, and Stiles could see him chewing the inside of his lip a little. 'Have you turned?' he asked bluntly.

'That's none of your goddamn...'

Stiles didn't get to finish, Derek rolled his eyes almost imperceptibly, then lashed out with one hand, grabbed Stiles down the shoulder and pulled him in close. Stiles bit back a loud yelp of indignation as Derek pressed his face into his neck and drew a deep pull of breath in through his nose, dragging the tip of it up from Stiles' collarbone to his hairline. Apparently satisfied, he pushed Stiles away again and released him.

'Yeah,' Derek sighed. 'You're a werewolf.'

'Shut _up_ and get _out_.'

'You need my help.'

'I don't need _dick_ from you.'

Derek reached out to grab him by the shoulders again but Stiles backed up fast until he felt his back hit his bedroom door. To his horror, he felt a burning irritation in his gums and the beds of his fingernails, and felt an animalistic snarl bubbling up from his chest, trying to force its way out of his mouth. He choked it back with great effort and closed his eyes, afraid that Derek might see the yellow glowing in his irises. When he'd calmed down, he squinted out through one eye and was annoyed to find Derek still standing there.

'Look,' Derek began. 'Don't get me wrong, I was planning to start a pack and build up my strength, but you were absolutely the _last_ person I ever would have thought about giving the bite.'

'Oh thanks a lot,' Stiles snapped indignantly.

Derek shrugged. 'It's the truth. It's not my fault you thought it would be a good idea to wandering through _my_ territory on a full moon and soak yourself in deer blood.' He held up his hand before Stiles could interrupt again. 'But you did, and I bit you, and now you're a werewolf and you're going to need my help. You're my responsibility now.'

'I don't need your help,' Stiles riposted stubbornly.

Derek laughed at him pityingly, and Stiles had to resist the urge to punch him. 'You've got a better plan?'

'As a matter of fact, yes.' Stiles folded his arms and lifted his chin defiantly. 'I'm not going to do it.'

'You're not going to...?'

'Do it. Be a werewolf. I'm not doing it.'

Derek looked as though he was torn between frustration and amusement. 'I hate to break it to you, Stiles, but you _are_ a werewolf. You don't get a choice about this.'

'Oh really?' Stiles glanced back towards his door, listening out to make sure his father was still downstairs and then returned to glare at Derek. 'I've been thinking, and what's the difference between being a werewolf and being a human, really? A little bit of extra speed and some really good hearing?'

'You're forgetting the part where you grow hair and fangs and run around trying to eat people,' Derek deadpanned.

'But you don't do that!' Stiles shot back, speaking faster now. 'I mean, maybe you do the whole hair and fangs things but you don't kill people... except for that one guy that you killed. I mean the whole pack thing, and howling at the moon and fighting for territory and stuff - I don't have to do any of that, right? It's all just like a... a social construct.' Stiles was pleased with this argument and ploughed ahead. 'All I have to do is figure out how to keep the transformation thing in check, make sure I ignore anything I'm not supposed to be able to smell or hear and boom, I'm _effectively_ still a human.'

Derek was standing there with his eyebrows raised infuriatingly. 'You won't be able to do it,' he stated with unswerved certainty. 'You'll fail. You'll slip up. You'll go crazy trying to repress what you are.'

'Dude, I can't afford to be a werewolf. I've seen what it's done to Scott's life - getting chased and shot by hunters, getting drawn into all kinds of crazy stuff, having to date his girlfriend in secret because if her dad finds out he'll literally kill him. Hell, look at the splash damage my life has already taken just from having a werewolf for a best friend.' Stiles shook his head fiercely. 'No. I've handled my ADHD for years, I can handle this as well.'

'And if you don't?' Derek persisted coldly. 'What happens when you wake up after the full moon and find your dad in the kitchen with his throat ripped out because you thought you could _handle it_?'

Stiles actually felt a chill in his veins at those words. 'Shut up,' he whispered.

Derek ignored him and took a step closer. 'Or what about that pretty little thing that you're so pathetically obsessed with? I hope your wolf doesn't trace her scent, go to her house and tear her to pieces. That would just be tragic.'

Stiles shivered. Lydia was still at home, recovering from Peter's attack. She was tough, but against a werewolf on the full moon she'd be helpless.

Derek suddenly shoved Stiles in the chest, hard, causing him to stumble. 'You think you can control this?' the Alpha mocked. 'You can't control anything. You'll lose it, Stiles, maybe tonight even. Most new werewolves turn on their first night. You might end up killing a rabbit, or a person, maybe even your own father.'

Like a fire inside him, Stiles felt his muscles bunch up, felt the awful sensation of claws trying to extend from the ends of his fingers, and subconsciously allowed his gaze to settle on the exact part of Derek's face that he would slash at and rip away. He could already imagine how beautiful Derek's howl of pain would sound, and how good the blood would feel splattering onto Stiles' skin...

Stiles took a deep breath. Then another. And another.

The tips of the claws retreated again, and he felt the ache in his jaw dissipate as the fangs that had been threatening to pop out withdrew. Stiles kept taking deep, slow breaths until he trusted himself to speak again.

'See?' he gasped. 'It's not so hard. If you can control yourself then anyone can.'

The expression of surprise on Derek's face was, if anything, even more gratifying then seeing it full of claw marks. The Alpha hesitated for a moment, before settling his air of scepticism back into place. 'Big deal. You can get it under control once, during a minor argument. Do you really trust yourself enough to stay human under the full moon, without any training?'

'Yes,' Stiles replied, but he could hear the certainty in his voice wavering.

'How much?' Derek pressed. 'Would you bet people's lives on it? Lydia's life? Your father's?' He knew exactly which buttons to push.

Stiles let the question tick over in his mind. He could hear his father bustling around in the kitchen, resigning himself to the task of putting a meal together since Stiles was supposedly up in his room sulking. Rubbing a hand over the short strands of hair on his head, Stiles sighed.

'Fine,' he said at last. 'Here's what's going to happen.' He could see Derek visibly bristling at being given commands, but he ignored the Alpha's indignation. 'You owe me, right?'

'You're my responsibility,' Derek repeated cautiously.

'Whatever. So you teach me how to keep from wolfing out every time I get angry, and you help keep me under control on the full moon. That's it. I don't see you outside of training, I'm not in your stupid pack and you don't get to tell me what to do or involve me in any of your weird werewolf stuff. Got it? Oh, and-' he raised a finger warningly. 'You don't tell Scott, or anyone else.'

Derek frowned. 'Scott doesn't know?'

'Scott doesn't need to know.'

'He told you, when it happened to him. Now you're going to lie to him?'

'Scott...' Stiles couldn't quite articulate why he didn't want Scott to know, except for the crazy, almost superstitious certainty that if Scott found out then the whole thing would suddenly become real. Right now Derek was the only one who knew, and if Stiles could keep everyone else believing that he was human then in a way he still would be. 'Just don't tell Scott.'

Derek looked annoyed, but shrugged. 'Fine. We should start your training tonight.'

Stiles balked at that. 'Tonight?' he echoed in a voice that was much higher-pitched than he would have liked.

'I told you, you're probably going to transform. It should happen out in the preserve, not here.'

'But I'm grounded!' Stiles blurted out without thinking.

He expected Derek to laugh, but instead he just looked a little sad, as though Stiles being grounded was an unpleasant reminder of how young he was. 'You'll figure something out,' Derek assured him at last, walking over to the window and opening it pointedly. 'My house. Nine o' clock. Don't be late.'

* * *

'You're late.'

Stiles gave Derek his dirtiest look as he trudged through the grass and fallen leaves that littered what had once been the lawn of the Hale house. He felt his eyes drawn to the place where Peter had died and vaguely wondered what Derek had done with the body. Something gross, no doubt.

'I had to walk here, douchebag. I couldn't exactly take my Jeep, could I? I had a hard enough time convincing my dad that I was going to bed two hours early.'

'Did you arrange some pillows under your blanket to fool him if he checks up on you?' Derek inquired seriously.

Stiles looked at him, trying to figure out if this was some kind of Hale attempt at humour. 'No.'

Derek whistled softly through his teeth. 'Better hope he doesn't check, then.' He stepped out from under his porch and the moonlight hit his face, making him look even more pale than usual. He made a beckoning gesture and Stiles reluctantly approached him, glancing up at the moon as he did so. It looked enormous, like it was about to consume the entire sky, and everything in the preserve was insanely bright. They might as well have been meeting in the middle of the day.

'So what do I do?' Stiles prompted, when Derek didn't speak.

'You're going to transform.'

'What?' Stiles barked angrily. 'I thought you were going to teach me how to control this.'

Derek bared his teeth in something that was probably meant to be a smile. 'How can you control it if you don't know what it is you're trying to control? You need to experience the transformation fully. Take note of what it feels like when it's about to happen. _Learn_ it. Once you know how to do that - once you've faced your wolf without fear - fighting it will be a lot easier.'

Stiles nodded doubtfully. 'So do I just...?'

'Look at the moon,' Derek instructed. His voice sounded strangely distant. He was looking up at the sky himself, hypnotised, the stubble on his cheeks very dark against his pale skin. Stiles could see the huge, almost perfectly round moon reflected in his eyes.

Reluctantly, Stiles turned to look himself. It really was huge, and he could make out all the shadows and craters and imperfections on its surface. He felt a shiver from somewhere deep inside him, and then started to panic as he felt his fingers and teeth and the bones in his face start to itch.

'Don't fight it,' Derek reminded him, and his voice was oddly distorted. Stiles glanced over at him and flinched when he saw that Derek was partially transformed - his ears elongated, his mouth full of oversized teeth and his irises coloured a sharp, bright red. As Stiles watched, Derek hurriedly pulled his loose grey shirt over his head and began unbuckling the belt on his jeans.

'W-what are you doing?' Stiles stammered.

'I'm an Alpha,' Derek growled in his scarily deep, slightly muffled voice, not taking his eyes off the moon as he shed his clothing. 'I'll change more than you will.' He began huffing deep, strong breaths that steamed in the air. 'Do it, Stiles,' he said, and the words were like a handful of rocks being rubbed together as Derek's humanity slipped away from him.

'Oh my God,' Stiles said shakily, but he remembered why he had to do this and - with a great effort - tried to let go of his fear. He looked back up at the moon and cried out in shock as he felt his teeth lengthen in his mouth, becoming strong, deadly fangs. Hair bristled down the sides of his face, creeping towards his jawline, and Stiles fell to his hands and knees as he felt his body shifting and becoming stronger. His fingers, he could see, were now tipped with thick, sharp, curved claws and he fell backwards and struggled to rip his sneakers off before the growing claws on his toes ripped through them. He threw the footwear blindly at the Hale house porch and felt his feet touch the bare, beautiful earth as he struggled upright again.

Stiles' mind was almost gone when he felt thick, wiry fur brushing against his side. He looked to his right and saw Derek in his Alpha form - huge and terrifying - pushing his muzzle against Stiles arm and sniffing him. Stiles heard a low rumble, deep in the creature's chest.

In Stiles' peripheral vision, he saw a small bush on the edge of the property rustle almost imperceptibly. His head whipped around and he heard his own wolf snarl in eagerness.

Mad with the light of the moon and the smell of prey, Stiles let it off the leash.


	4. Chapter 4

When Stiles finally stirred, it felt like being born for the very first time. There was a heavy weight on his legs, pinning him down, but Stiles didn't mind too much. It felt peaceful out here, with the dead leaves underneath him and the fading taste of copper in his mouth, and he opened his eyes slowly and leisurely, grinning lazily at the canopy of trees overhead, at the bird calls in the trees, at the dead deer staring at him with its glazed over eye...

Stiles replayed that last thought, his gaze tracking back to the deer, and then he jumped as though he'd been bitten, yelping and struggling. He heard a grumble of protest from nearby and looked down to find Derek - human again and stark naked - lying across Stiles' legs. Stiles managed to extricate a single foot from underneath Derek's bulk and used it to kick Derek repeatedly in the ribs with his bare heel. With a put-upon sigh, the Alpha rolled over and freed up Stiles' other leg.

They were in the lee of a fallen tree trunk, dirt and overgrown weeds piled up against on side of to create a small hollow on the other. Stiles flexed his toes and winced as he felt pins and needles coursing up his legs, refusing to look at the fallen carcass nearby. He tried desperately not to think about the current contents of his stomach, lest he bring them up and get a first-hand look.

Derek yawned hugely, showing off his snowy-white human teeth, and then grinned at Stiles in a drowsy way. His usually carefully-styled hair was tousled and had leaves stuck in it, and he looked somehow softer and more open than Stiles had ever seen him, even with his intimidatingly thick and toned muscles on show.

'Uhhh...' Stiles wasn't sure how to bring up the fact of the living creature they'd just killed. 'Guess we already had breakfast?' Oh no, he was definitely going to hurl now.

Derek just beamed at him again - it was such a rare expression to see on his face that it was starting to give Stiles the creeps - and then put one hand on the tree trunk, pushing himself upright like a meerkat and looking at their surroundings to get a fix on their location. Satisfied, he lowered his body again and planted his hands either side of Stiles, hovering over him and doing that weird sniffing thing again. Stiles froze up entirely as Derek nuzzled at his armpit, then his neck, before finally brushing his nose against the top of Stiles head and breathing in whatever scent was on the short bristles of his hair.

'Hey,' Derek murmured in a sleep-scratchy, affectionate voice. 'Hey, pup.'

Stiles decided that enough was enough and placed both his hands on the top of Derek's head, shoving him firmly away. Derek let him do it, still grinning as though the whole thing was a game, and sat back against the tree trunk, not taking his eyes off Stiles.

' _What?_ ' Stiles demanded at last. 'Not that this doesn't make a nice change from you threatening me, but why are you acting so goofy?'

Derek gestured towards the dead deer. 'We ran together. We hunted together. We killed together.'

Stiles shuddered. 'Don't remind me.'

Derek just laughed. It was such a weird noise, coming from him. 'You're my beta now, Stiles. My first beta. I'm your Alpha. Don't you feel it?'

In truth, it did feel like things had changed a little between them, but Stiles wasn't particularly interested. 'Whatever,' he muttered impatiently, looking up at the sky with a sense of impending dread. 'Oh God. What time is it?'

'Hmmm?' Derek was standing up and stretching and - yeah, still naked, wow... Stiles was just going to look away from naked stretching Derek now.

'What time is it?' he asked again, more shrilly this time. He stood up and automatically patted his pockets to try and find his phone, though he'd left it in his room so it wouldn't get trashed, and realised the state of his clothes. His shirt was filthy and tattered, his jeans not much better. His shoes were gone and he couldn't remember taking them off. Looking up at the sun, he figured that it had to be about noon. 'My dad is going to kill me,' he groaned.

Derek clapped a hand on his shoulder, and Stiles could have sworn that he actually felt himself sink into the earth by a few centimetres.

'Come back to my house,' he said firmly. 'Your dad might be a little less mad if you come back wearing shoes.'

Stiles thought about arguing, then realised that Derek was probably right. He followed the werewolf's lead back to the Hale house, silently running over potential excuses in his head. It was a Saturday, so his dad wouldn't be at work, and by now he would have gone up to check on Stiles and found his bedroom empty, with his keys and phone still on his desk. He'd probably be switching between states of worry and extreme anger, neither of which were good for his heart and _why was Derek still staring?_

'Why are you staring at me?' Stiles asked irritably.

Derek shrugged and looked away, but he was still smiling. 'I've never had a beta before,' he admitted. 'I haven't had anything resembling a pack since Laura died. I feel stronger already, with you. It feels... not so lonely any more.'

'I'm not your beta,' Stiles said distractedly, still thinking of excuses he could make. 'I told you, I'm not going to be in your pack.'

Derek was silent for the rest of the walk back.

* * *

'Stop the car. _Stop_.'

Derek pulled the Camaro over obediently, still two streets away from Stiles' house, and turned the engine off. He kept one hand resting loosely on the steering wheel and looked ahead, his expression inscrutable.

'So I have to find an anchor, right?' Stiles prompted after a moment of silence. 'Some kind of strong emotional connection to keep me human when I'm ready to wolf out?'

'You're a fast learner,' Derek said drily. The euphoria from their hunt had apparently worn off and he was back to his old, grumpy self.

'And failing that...?'

'Pain.'

'Pain, right. Great. I just can't get enough of that,' Stiles sighed. 'OK, I'll figure something out. Then next month, during the full moon, we meet up again, right? I'll need you to keep an eye on me.'

Derek nodded. 'You have my number?' he asked quietly.

'You texted me about a hundred times yesterday. Yeah, I have your number.'

'Good. If you lose your phone, or can't get a signal, then just howl. I'll be able to hear you, even if you're miles away.'

'Uh, thanks. Communicate by text or howl, got it.'

Stiles opened the door of the Camaro, but Derek clamped a hand down on his arm and held him back for a moment.

'Anything you need,' he added seriously. 'This goes beyond me trying to take responsibility for biting you, Stiles. I'm your Alpha now.'

'I'm not-'

'I know you don't want to be part of any of this... werewolf stuff,' Derek quoted bitterly. 'I can't force you to be. But as far as I'm concerned you're my beta, and I would die to protect you.'

Stiles had no idea how to respond to that. 'OK?' he said warily.

Derek let him go and Stiles climbed out of the car, took a deep breath, and began walking home to face the music.

* * *

'Sorry to call you in on a weekend, Sheriff, but I thought you'd want to see this,' Deputy Graham said grimly as they trudged through the preserve to the crime scene.

'I do. Dead bodies are worth getting up early on a Saturday for,' John replied heavily, taking a sip from his coffee thermos. He'd got the call at 8am and considered knocking on Stiles' door to let him know that he was heading out, maybe even to see if his son was in a more talkative mood, but in the end he'd opted for just leaving a note on the fridge saying that he'd gone out. If he told Stiles that a dead body had been found in the woods, it was more or less guaranteed that the kid would be trying to duck under the police cordon within a couple of hours - possibly even before John got there himself.

Half of the Beacon Hills Sheriff's Department, as well as a few state police officers, were already crowded around inside the yellow tape when John arrived there. He nodded curtly to them as he approached the subject of everyone's attentions, taking a deep breath before he got there.

The body was camouflaged a little against the ground and was stuck to the leaves with blood, but John could see that it was just a kid. Stiles' age. In fact, he looked vaguely familiar, like someone that John might have seen at parent-teacher conferences or in school photos. He swallowed hard and forced himself to take in the sight of the poor boy's torso, which had four ragged cuts opened from his sternum down to his groin with glistening intestines spilling out of them.

'Animal attack?' John managed to ask hoarsely.

'Hard to tell,' Graham replied. 'The guys found a deer carcass in another part of the preserve that was partially eaten, but if this kid was killed by an animal then we'd expect there to be more pieces missing. We'll have to wait for lab results to be sure.'

John straightened up and sighed. 'Poor kid. What a waste,' he muttered. 'What an awful waste.'

'Sheriff Stilinski?'

He turned around, expecting to find one of the state police officers talking to him. Instead he saw a round-eyed, middle-aged woman with curly brown hair standing next to a similarly-aged man wearing a waterproof jacket and a bad combover, both of them staring almost greedily at the body on the ground. They were outside the cordon, just barely, but the woman was raising a camera and pointing it at the ground.

Trying to keep his temper, John marched over to them, deliberately blocking the body from their view. 'You need to leave,' he said sharply. 'This is a crime scene.'

'Is it a murder, or an animal attack? Or both?' the man asked, his forehead perspiring a little.

The woman giggled indulgently and elbowed the man in admonition. 'Sorry about him, Sheriff. I'm Cathy Marcus, this is my husband Jeremy - you can call him Jerry - and we'd just love a chance to interview you. We're the editors of Strange Times, you see, it's this little magazine that...'

'I'm sorry, I don't have time for this,' John interrupted coldly. 'A boy has died. I'm going to have to ask you to show some respect and leave.'

'Was he clawed up?' Jerry Marcus asked eagerly. John took an immediate, fierce disliking to the man, though he laughed in embarrassment a moment later. 'I know, we must sound so ghoulish. It's the investigative spirit, you see. I know we don't look like much but if you give us a chance I think you'd find that we know quite a bit that you might find interesting.'

'Deputy Graham,' John called over his shoulder. His deputy walked over, looking a little green and grateful to be away from the corpse. 'Please escort these two back to their vehicle and make sure they get in it and drive away.' He heard the unmistakeable click and whirr of Cathy Marcus' camera and sighed, turning back to her and pulling it out of her hands.

'You'll can pick this up from the Sheriff's Office once we've wiped any crime scene photos from it,' he told her calmly, ignoring her protests. 'Don't worry, we'll leave your holiday pictures on there. I assume you're only staying in Beacon Hills temporarily,' he added pointedly.

Cathy and Jerry exchanged a knowing glance. 'Unless we find anything here that takes our interest,' Jerry replied. He fixed John with a beady stare. 'We'll be sure to drop by and pick up our camera. Hopefully we can talk more then.'

John managed to resist a direct insult and instead nodded at Deputy Graham, who ducked under the cordon and began herding the Marcuses away. Watching them leave out of the corner of his eye, John turned and walked back over to the body. A couple of forensic specialists in white clean suits were crouched by it now, taking photographs and samples, and so John joined them, forcing himself to look down unflinchingly at the poor kid's staring eyes and eviscerated stomach. The memory of Stiles' torn, bloody T-shirt came to his mind unbidden and he shuddered.

'Can you give me any idea of what might have done this?' he asked.

One of the forensics guys, Fleming, pulled down the mask from his face and straightened up. 'There are five cuts in total, and they're consistent,' he exposited clinically.

'Five?' John peered a little closer. 'I only see four.'

'The last one is shorter, and it's on his side. They could have been made separately, but right now it's looking less and less likely to be an animal attack. There aren't any animals in the preserve that I can think of with five claws to a paw, especially not spaced this widely apart. If I had to guess, I'd say that this was done with some kind of custom-made implement, though we haven't found a murder weapon yet.'

John's heart sank at the word _murder_. 'Could this be anything to do with that poor girl we found out here earlier this year?' He didn't need to specify which one.

'Laura Hale? I thought that case was written off as an animal attack?'

'It was.' Perhaps there was no connection, but John was desperate for some kind of clue. Who would want to murder a high school kid, and in such an awful way? John sighed heavily and asked, 'How long before we can get him to the morgue?'

'We're done taking photos so you can move him now. Combing the scene for evidence is going to take a while, though.'

John nodded and began to prepare himself for a long day of hard and unpleasant work. First, though, he pulled out his phone and sent a quick text to Stiles.

" _I'll be home late. I love you_."

He was about to put his phone away when a thought occurred to him and he pulled it out again.

" _P.S. You're still grounded_."


	5. Chapter 5

It wasn't the stupidest thing he had ever done, but it was pretty high up on the list.

Stiles laughed nervously to himself as he sat on his bed, the taser that he had swiped from the station to show off to Scott last year clutched in his hand. He was still working on figuring out his anchor, but he wanted to try out Plan B while his dad was out of the house. He'd received a text saying that the Sheriff wouldn't be home till late (it hadn't mentioned what he was doing, which probably meant that it was something incredibly interesting) and so Stiles was preparing to voluntarily wolf out.

'OK, Stiles,' he said to himself. 'You can do this. Claws first.' He looked down at his hand and screwed up his face, holding his breath and trying to force the wolf claws to sprout. He was pretty red in the face by the time he gave up on that method and sat gasping for a moment, annoyed.

'Heart rate,' he muttered, getting up and starting to run on the spot. He felt his heart speed up a little, but not by much; it was a lot harder to get his heart racing with exercise now. He closed his eyes and started doing star jumps, trying to think about the moon last night and how it had looked: huge and round and...

Stiles' fingers started to itch and he dared to stop jumping, open his eyes and peek at them. Sure enough, each one had a vicious-looking claw curving out of the end of it, and for a moment Stiles forgot that this wasn't a good thing and whooped in excitement. He might not be happy about being a werewolf, but he couldn't deny that he'd always secretly wanted to be Wolverine. Except, you know, taller.

After a second or two he remembered the purpose of the experiment and pressed the taser against the middle of his chest. It was difficult to hold onto with the claws out, but he managed somehow, took a deep breath, and then pressed the trigger.

The effect was instantaneous and agonising. Stiles' entire body went stiff and pain burned through him, knocking him off his feet and causing him to crash to floor, whacking his head on a bedknob on the way down. He was fairly certain that he lost consciousness for a second or two, but when he blinked his eyes blearily and held a hand up in front of his face, he saw that the claws had retreated and left behind normal, harmless human fingernails.

'OK,' he gasped, surprised that smoke wasn't coming out of his mouth like in a cartoon. 'Pain. Tick that off the list. Pain works.'

Stiles didn't much like the idea of shooting himself up with electricity (it seemed like this was one of the few weaknesses for werewolves) every time he needed to get his symptoms under control, though, so reluctantly he went to his desk drawer, pulled out the little envelope of photos from the bottom, and went back to sit on his bed.

He didn't open it right away. There was a picture of her in the den, and another in his father's bedroom. For a while Stiles had tried keeping one in a frame on his desk, but it was too hard. He'd try to do homework and she'd catch his eye, and his head would get mixed up in a maelstrom of depressed thoughts and anxiety about his dad and guilt about... everything. He'd relive that day at the hospital and...

Stiles had put the photos away.

He knew that this was going to be his anchor. In a way, it always had been. He swallowed hard and opened the envelope. There were only about a dozen photos in there, the old-fashioned kind that you used to get printed at the drugstore before Stiles had his own laptop and printer and phone with a digital camera on it. He flipped through them, a lump growing in his chest as he looked at his mom's face smiling up at him, squinting under a sunhat at the beach, hanging over his dad's shoulder like a kid as he cooked pancakes at their old stove.

Finally Stiles reached the one he was looking for. It was from their last Christmas together, before things got really bad and his mom more or less moved into the hospital. He remembered that she was having a good day, and that she laughed at him as he tiptoed into his parent's bedroom at six in the morning, asking with wide eyes if he could open the presents yet.

He'd bought her a Get Well Soon card for Christmas.

In the photo they're sat in front of the Christmas tree in their pyjamas, his dad's hair kind of long and scruffy from sleep. His parents were both hugging him, one hand on each shoulder, and he looked so happy in the picture and fuck... _fuck_...

It hurt so much worse than the taser. Stiles hurriedly shoved the rest of the photos back into the envelope and tore off one of the smaller, wallet-sized versions of the Christmas one. This he kept, holding it in his hand so that his fingers covered it and angrily dashing the moisture out of his eyes.

'Yeah,' he muttered hoarsely to himself. 'That'll work.'

* * *

Stiles spent the rest of the day practising control. It was probably one of the worst weekends he'd had a in a long time. He would work himself up into wolfing out, then he'd have to think about his parents - about the photograph - to drag himself back.

It didn't always work. He would give himself thirty seconds to defang, and if it hadn't happened he'd grit his teeth and give himself a hit from the taser in the hope of turning it into some kind of aversion therapy. By the time his dad got home that evening Stiles was aching all over, despite his accelerated healing, and was feeling miserable and snappy.

His dad came upstairs and knocked on the door. Stiles pulled one of his textbooks out and lay down on his stomach on the bed, pretending to read. He grunted in acknowledgment and his dad let himself into the room.

'You OK, Stiles?' he asked, his voice a little rough.

'Fine,' Stiles replied shortly.

Out of the corner of his eye he saw his dad nod, but he didn't move from the doorway. Stiles endured this for a little while, but frankly he'd had enough of being stared at already for one day.

'I'm trying to study, dad, what do you want?' he demanded impatiently.

'Nothing,' the Sheriff replied softly, backing out of his room. 'Goodnight, Stiles.'

Stiles scowled and threw the heavy textbook on the floor, not caring if his dad heard him. He was exhausted from two disturbed nights in a row, and he needed to sleep. Opening the drawer on his bedside table, he pulled out a pair of handcuffs (OK, he'd stolen a few things from the station over the years) and made sure the key was in reach before slapping them onto one of his wrists and attaching the other cuff to a railing on his bed.

He set his alarm to make sure he'd be up before his dad. He could probably explain this away if he had to - just using the word "experimenting" would probably be enough to get his dad backing hurriedly out of the room - but it was time to take the Everything is Normal With Stiles show back on the road and getting caught handcuffed to the bed would be a poor opening act.

Stiles lay back in bed and took a deep breath. 'OK, you,' he muttered, directly addressing the parasite that had buried itself inside him. 'I don't like you and you don't... well, OK, I don't know what you like, apart from eating the local wildlife. Point is, I'm going to sleep now and you are too. In fact, you can feel free to stay asleep for the rest of my natural life. If I wake up and found my pillow all shredded I'm gonna start sprinkling dried wolfsbane in my socks just to piss you off, got it?'

There was no reply, but Stiles liked to think that he'd got the message across. He lay back in bed and tried to go to sleep, but it wasn't easy when he could hear his next door neighbour brushing her teeth and the roar of a car engine three blocks away and every cricket in what sounded like a mile wide radius of the house and his dad scratching his nose in the room across the hall and... wow, how had Stiles never realised how noisy the town of Beacon Hills was at night?

He sat up to go and fetch his iPod from the desk but was pulled back by his wrist, which was of course still handcuffed to the bed. Stiles scowled and considered unshackling himself, but in the end he just laid his head down on one pillow and clamped the other down over his ear to try and block out the worst of the noise.

It took him nearly an hour to fall asleep. When he woke up the next morning, the pillow he'd had over his ear was in tatters and there were feathers all over the bed.

* * *

The Sheriff was tied up with some kind of huge case for the rest of the weekend, which Stiles was absolutely fine with. It gave him time to sweep up all the feathers in his room and dump them in a trashcan a few streets over (since his dad was apparently going through their own garbage now). It wasn't until Monday at school that he found out the truth.

They were sitting in their first class of the day, Chemistry. Stiles was two rows over from Scott, since his new rule was that if he was close enough to be able to sniff out Scott's wolfiness, then Scott would be close enough to smell his own. Stiles was wearing some kind of perfume (no, that was the wrong word - what was the manly word for perfume?) that he'd bought cheap to cover his scent a little, but he knew that all Scott needed to get was one good whiff and it would all be over.

Harris was late into class, but silenced the chatter with a single glare. 'I just got out of a staff meeting. So that we don't lose any more class time than is absolutely necessary, I'm going to keep this brief. A sophomore student, Benjamin Chaplin, was found dead in the woods over the weekend...'

He was briefly interrupted by a chorus of soft gasps, people muttering Benny's name and one girl bursting into tears. Stiles sat there, completely numb with shock. He'd shared a Geography class with Benny last year, and knew him well enough to nod at him in the hallway. Now he was dead. Another kid bites the dust.

'How'd he die?' Stiles heard himself asking, before he could stop himself.

Harris looked at him disdainfully. 'I'm not about to share the gory details with a class of students,' he sneered.

'So it was gory?' Stiles persisted, trying and failing to keep his mouth shut. 'Like, blood and guts and stuff?'

The girl at the back of the classroom started sobbing even harder. He heard a few people groan at him in disgust.

'Stilinski, if you don't shut up I'm going to give you detention,' Harris snapped.

'You can't give me detention, I'm traumatised. So was it an animal attack? If he was out in the woods...'

'Detention, Stilinski.'

'But I'm only asking questions because I'm in shock!' Stiles protested.

'Then an hour of detention ought to calm you down,' Harris shot back coldly. 'Speaking of hours...' He lifted his head and addressed the entire class again. 'An eight o' clock curfew has been put into effect immediately, until further notice...' He smirked a little. 'By order of Sheriff Stilinski.'

There were a few louder groans at that, and Stiles felt a ball of paper hit the back of his head hard. It took him by surprise and he gasped quietly as he felt a bubble of rage rise up through him, trying to push its way out through his fingertips and his gums and his...

Stiles closed his eyes hurriedly and counted to ten in his head, thinking about the picture in his wallet and the smell of the Christmas tree. Luckily, Harris had turned back to the board and begun writing notes on it, which left Stiles with enough time to recover. When he opened his eyes again, he noticed that Scott was staring at him, looking concerned.

" _You OK?_ " he mouthed.

Stiles nodded and subtly checked his hands before shooting Scott a quick thumbs-up.

" _Benny?_ " Scott added, wide-eyed.

Stiles shrugged in a way that he hoped would convey the message that he was planning to grill his father about it as soon as he got home. His heart was pounding in his chest, so loudly that he knew Scott must be able to hear it. Stiles found his mind unwillingly drawn to the poor dead deer in the woods, with its sad, glazed-over eye and empty chest cavity. They'd found Benny over the weekend. What if... when he'd been out running with Derek...

_We hunted together. We killed together._

Stiles found it very difficult to concentrate on chemistry that day.


	6. Chapter 6

Luckily the house was still empty when Stiles got home, which meant that his dad hopefully wouldn't find out about the detention - or the reason for it. Acting on autopilot, Stiles got some chicken out of the freezer and put it under the grill, then put some fresh vegetables on to steam. His dad's diet would generally get worse whenever there was a bad case like this and if the Sheriff was left to his own devices he would subsist entirely on takeaway meals and coffee that was strong enough to scour pans with.

The smell of cooking food made Stiles' stomach growl like crazy. If one good thing had come out of this whole werewolf nightmare, it was that his new sense of smell enabled him to appreciate food so much more (though the downside was that he could also pick out all the things he'd rather not be able to smell in the school cafeteria food). Looking around first to make sure no one was peering in through the kitchen windows, Stiles crouched down by the grill and slowly, deliberately, allowed his fangs to extend to their full length.

He took a couple of deep breaths like that and then, with the same care, retracted them. This was one of the pieces of advice that Derek had given him: if he practised deliberately bringing on the change, it would make it easier to perform the reverse. It was like a muscle inside him, and the more he exercised it, the more control he would have. He'd never been able to do it that easily before, so maybe he was improving - or maybe it was just the smell of chicken.

The front door opened and closed, causing Stiles to straighten up sharpish and run his tongue nervously over his teeth. His dad came into the kitchen, looking weary and carrying a thick file under his arm that Stiles knew, just at a glance, probably contained autopsy photos and reports from the crime scene. He took a deep breath, adopted a casual expression, and began to lay the table.

* * *

'Welcome home,' Stiles said with a suspicious air of chirpiness, pulling knives and forks from the drawer. 'Dinner should be ready in about five minutes. Take a seat, you look tired.'

John watched him warily, deliberately keeping one hand flat on the case file as he set it on the table next to his placemat. 'Alright, what did you do?' he asked bluntly.

Stiles' eyes widened in mock-hurt. 'Can't I do something nice for my father without...'

' _Stiles_.'

'OK, I might have ended up in detention. A little bit of detention. A detentionette. Totally not my fault, Harris...'

John raised his hand placatingly. 'Detention I can handle. Just so long as you didn't crash the Jeep again.' He sniffed the air in trepidation. 'What did you cook?'

'We've got some chicken...'

'Fried?' John asked hopefully.

' _Grilled_ , Dad. And steamed vegetables. Mmm, broccoli!'

John was convinced that no one in the history of the world had ever said the words "mmm, broccoli" with genuine enthusiasm, but somehow Stiles managed to pull it off. Nevertheless, he couldn't help but feel grateful as Stiles served up the food onto two plates and sat down at the table with him. Too often these days the kid had skipped family meals to go on one of his mysterious after-school sojourns, and it was actually gratifying to see him acting (relatively) normal after a day spent in what felt like a horror movie.

The peace didn't last long, however. With a mouthful of chicken, Stiles nodded faux-casually at the case file and asked, 'Bringing your work home with you?'

John fixed him with a pointed stare. 'You're not looking at it, Stiles.'

'I might be able to help!' Stiles hectored, waving his fork. 'Benny was in my class, Dad!'

'Right, as if I already didn't have enough reasons _not_ to show autopsy photos to a sixteen year-old kid,' John shot back, sliding the file farther away from Stiles. 'I'm pretty sure I'd call Child Services myself if you managed to get a look at the dead body of one of your classmates under my watch. Eat your food.'

Stiles shovelled another mouthful of chicken into his mouth, but didn't take his eyes of the file. He barely chewed before swallowing it and piping up again with, 'Was it an animal? I heard you found him in the woods.'

'Stiles...' John sighed. Wasn't it bad enough that he had to think about this stuff at work all day?'

' _Dad_ ,' Stiles mimicked. 'Come on, I'll be safer after dark if I know whether it's a human killer or an animal wandering around out there.'

John paused with his fork halfway up to his threat and jabbed the point of it, broccoli and all, fiercely in Stiles' direction. 'You're not going to _be_ out after dark, Stiles. There's a curfew.'

Stiles let out a sudden growl of frustration. 'Would you just tell me if it was an animal or...'

'No,' John snapped, eager to end the conversation. 'Unless you know of any large predators around here with five claws to a limb, it wasn't an animal attack.' He stopped short at the look on his son's face, suddenly filled with concern. 'Stiles?'

The younger Stilinski had gone suddenly very pale, as though he was about to bring up his food, and his fork had clattered onto his plate. He swallowed hard, adam's apple bobbing, and then glanced over quickly at the case file across the table.

John laid a hand over it protectively and asked, in as calm a voice as he could muster, 'Are you done with the interrogation?'

After another few seconds of stunned silence Stiles said, as though in a trance, 'I... uh. I just remembered I have... homework and... upstairs.' He stood up suddenly, his chair legs scraping on the floor.

'You're not done eating!' John exclaimed, sitting up straight and staring it his son in bewilderment, but Stiles already had his back turned and was racing noisily up the stairs, shutting the door behind him.

John stared after him for a moment, and then dropped his forehead wearily into one hand, rubbing his fingers through his hair for about the hundredth time that day.

* * *

'Didn't expect to see you back so soon,' Derek said stiffly, standing on the porch of his house with his arms folded as Stiles ran up to meet him, only slightly out of breath after running the four miles from his house.

It was about midnight (Stiles didn't do curfews), and he'd waited until his dad was asleep before texting Derek with details of where to meet him and jumping straight out of his window to the grass two storeys down, which - OK, yeah - was kind of cool and useful.

'It's an emergency,' Stiles hissed. 'Get inside, quick.'

Derek moved to stand in front of the door a little protectively. 'What's this about?' he demanded.

'I'm telling you, this is not a conversation to be had in the open air,' Stiles said, speaking at what sounded like a million words per minute, even to his own ears. This seemed to persuade Derek, who opened his front door reluctantly and walked inside. Stiles hurried into the wreck of the Hale house behind him and shut the burnt, flaking door behind him.

'OK,' he gasped, trying to calm himself down. 'OK, OK... oh crap, I knew I shouldn't have let myself get into this stupid werewolf stuff, I should have just chained myself in my basement and...'

'Stiles, what are you babbling about?' Derek interrupted impatiently.

'OK,' Stiles repeated, forcing himself to stand still and look Derek in the eye. 'I don't want to worry you, but I think I might have killed someone.'

Derek stiffened in alarm. 'What? Who? When?' he fired in quick succession.

Stiles opted to answer the last question first. 'Friday night,' he moaned.

That prompted a frown from Derek. 'You were with me on Friday night,' he said, puzzled.

Stiles turned this over in his head. 'Yeah, yeah, maybe it was you! Maybe it wasn't me at all!' The thought was strangely comforting to him and he grinned at Derek in relief. The werewolf was staring back at him pityingly.

'I didn't kill anyone on Friday night,' he said slowly, as though speaking to an idiot, which Stiles found quite offensive, actually. 'Neither did you. We were together the whole night.'

'You remember what happened?'

'Yes.'

'Everything?'

' _Yes_.'

'And there was no...' Stiles waved his hands vaguely. 'Eviscerating of teenagers?'

'No.' Derek looked troubled. 'Wait, who was killed?'

Stiles was still clutching at his chest, trying not to laugh at the relief of finding out that he wasn't a murderer after all. 'Kid. From my school. Benny. They found him - the cops found him - in the woods... all gutted... my dad said it was something with five claws...'

He was rudely interrupted by Derek suddenly and violently wolfing out with a snarl, his eyes glowing red and his fangs bared in anger. Stiles staggered back a couple of steps, not only feeling fear at the sight of a partially-transformed Derek, but also actually sensing Derek's anger resonating inside himself, as though the two of them were connected by an invisible thread. Something deep inside of Stiles whined in terror and supplication, screamed at him to cower in a corner until his Alpha's rage was all burnt out...

 _He's not my goddamn Alpha_ , the piece of Stiles that was still Stiles yelled back indignantly. He forced himself to stay upright, keeping a wary eye on Derek as the werewolf's eyes faded back to their normal colour and the signs of his wolfishness retreated once more to leave him looking disturbed and frustrated.

'Damn it,' Derek hissed. 'I was afraid of this.'

'Afraid of what?' Stiles asked shakily.

Derek growled and began pacing back and forth. 'Someone's trying to move in on my territory. There's plenty of wild space out here in Beacon Hills and I'm too weak to defend it right now, my pack is too small. Another werewolf killed that kid as an insult to me.'

 _You don't have a pack at all_ , Stiles thought, though he was wise enough not to say it out loud. Instead he went with the comparatively mild, 'Oh great. So Benny's parents have to pick out funeral clothes just because you stupid freakin' werewolves can't just figure out how to share?'

Derek shot him a vicious glare, but Stiles was already on a roll.

'I mean, if they wanted to insult you then what's so hard about just leaving a bag of burning dog crap on your doorstep? Or how about just a note saying, "Hey, dick, move over"?'

'Shut up, Stiles.'

Stiles opened his mouth to plough ahead, but then thought better of it. Suddenly he realised that what was going on here was exactly what he hadn't wanted to happen. Sneaking out late at night, having to deal with werewolf politics... this was _not_ his life.

'Right,' he said firmly. He cast his eyes around on the floor until he found a small stone and walked over the wall of what had once been the Hale family den. With his back to Derek he scratched letters and shapes into the blackened surface, ignoring the small growl of protest from behind him.

Satisfied that he had a plan of action, Stiles stepped away from the wall so that Derek could see the fruits of his labours. Derek stared, frowning.

Stiles had written the word "CURE" in big block letters, then surrounded it with a cloud shape. 'We're going to brainstorm this,' he announced.

An awkward moment passed in which Stiles looked at Derek expectantly and Derek looked back at him as thought he was trying to decide which piece of Stiles he wanted to tear off first.

Stiles sighed. 'You're no help. OK, so you told Scott that he could cure himself if he killed the Alpha that bit him so...' Stiles walked back to the diagram and carefully wrote the words "KILL DEREK" to the top right of the little thought cloud. As an afterthought, he drew a line between the edge of the cloud and the words.

Pleased with his efforts he turned around to face Derek, folded his arms and waited for feedback. 'Thoughts?' he prompted.

Derek slowly looked from the word "CURE" to the words "KILL DEREK" and then back at Stiles, his mouth set in a grim line.

'Not a fan?' Stiles guessed innocently.

'You can't cure yourself by killing me,' Derek said at last. He didn't add, _and you wouldn't be able to kill me if you tried_ , though Stiles suspected that he was thinking it..

'But you told Scott...'

'I _lied_ to Scott.' Derek shrugged. 'I wanted him to help me.'

Stiles' heart sank. It hadn't been the best solution, but it had been _something_. 'But...'

'If you killed me, the only thing that would happen is you'd become an Alpha. I'm guessing that's not an ideal situation for you?'

'Fine.' Stiles scowled and turned back to his diagram, drawing another line coming out of the thought cloud. 'OK,' he said, turning back. 'I came up with the first idea. Your turn.'

'There isn't a cure,' Derek said softly, seriously.

'There's no such word as "isn't,"' Stiles retorted.

'Yes there is.'

'Fine, there is. But I don't want to hear it in any conversation related to getting me cured.'

'Stiles...'

'There's gotta be a plant or an herb or something... some kind of ritual. I'll cover myself in virgin's blood during the full moon if I have to, hell, we've got a virgin right here...' Stiles babbled, feeling panic and despair bubbling up inside him.

Derek cringed as though he could physically feel Stiles' distress, then suddenly moved forward, grabbed Stiles wrist to hold the hand with the writing rock still, and used his other hand to cup the back of Stiles' head. 'There's no cure,' he repeated, quiet but fervent. 'This isn't a disease, Stiles. It's a gift.'

'I don't want it!' Stiles yelled, feeling his eyes burn gold and his fangs grow out and hating it, _hating_ it. 'Take it back,' he begged, his voice rough through the teeth but still cracking audibly. 'I don't want this. I don't want to _be_ this.'

Derek's own eyes glowed red in sympathy. 'Stiles,' he whispered urgently. 'If you could see... if you could have seen yourself when we ran together the other night, you'd see how right this is. You're _perfect_ , Stiles, it comes so naturally to you, I was an idiot not to want you in my pack. I should have come to you, I should have offered you the bite, I should have given you a choice...'

'I would have said no,' Stiles snarled. 'I would have said no to you, just like I said no to Peter.'

Derek drew his breath in sharply and pulled back a little, suddenly confused and frantic. 'What? _What?'_

Stiles pushed him away, relieved when Derek allowed it. 'Yeah,' he said bitterly. 'Your uncle offered me the bite. At least he made it my decision. You forced this on me.' He clenched his fist around the stone in his hand until he felt it break through his skin, then in a burst of temper he hurled the bloodied stone at one of the walls. It passed through the crumbled brick and plaster with the force of a bullet, leaving a small hole in its path.

Derek stared at him, his face human and devastated. 'Stiles, I...'

'I'm going home,' Stiles said suddenly, darting towards the door. He couldn't bear to be here any more, in this sad old tomb where werewolves had died purely for being werewolves.

Derek caught him gently by the arm, holding him back. He opened and closed his mouth a few times before finally snapping it shut on whatever he'd been about to say. After a second or two he said in even tones, 'I'll see you at the full moon.'

Stiles nodded, tensing his jaw. 'Yeah,' he said.

Derek released his arm. Stiles disappeared into the night.


	7. Chapter 7

'No. Yes, of course. I understand. No. Alright, release the body. Give the parents our apologies and condolences.' John finished his whispered conversation, put the phone back down in its cradle and wandered over to open the kitchen door a little so that he could see Stiles sitting in the lotus position in the middle of the den. He had taken up yoga now, apparently.

John sighed and rubbed a hand over the forehead. After two weeks of being poked and prodded in the morgue, the Chaplin boy's death had been declared the result of an animal attack. A very unusual animal attack, just like the Hale girl, but the hairs and tiny fragments of claws in the wound certainly didn't come from any kind of human. The curfew had been lifted, though the preserve was remaining off-limits after dark, and John knew that he should put the whole sorry situation to bed for a couple of days and take some time catch up on the paperwork from all the less-urgent cases he'd been ignoring.

More than once, John had considered showing some of the evidence to Stiles and asking for his thoughts on it. He'd even dropped the occasional details to him, which would normally have been enough to get the kid's sharp mind swirling and kicking up ideas, but after that first dinner Siles had shown a surprising lack of interest in the case. Whenever John would bring it up, Stiles would just grunt in response, or change the subject or even find an excuse to leave the room.

If he'd had any other kid, John wouldn't even have considered talking over cases with him, but the fact was that Stiles had a natural and usually irrepressible interest in whatever crimes Beacon Hills could cook up, as well a mind for analysing clues that could rival any member of the actual Sheriff's Department.

John wasn't sure what it was about this particular case that made Stiles so averse to talking about it. Perhaps it was because he had known the victim or perhaps (and John feared that this was more likely) it had something to do with that torn and bloodied T-shirt that John had stored upstairs in an evidence bag - just in case.

It was a mistake to mix his work life up with his home life, and John wouldn't do it if he wasn't so sure that the two things were already irrevocably mixed up. There were far too many coincidences - Stiles finding the Hale girl's body, and just happening to be at the school when the janitor was killed, his friendship with the Argent girl whose aunt had been murdered and identified as a murderer at the same gruesome crime scene - and John couldn't shake a feeling that his son knew even more about these cases than he did.

What could he do, though? What could he say? It was one thing to sit Stiles down at the kitchen table and talk about how important it was to pay attention in school, but John just couldn't imagine looking Stiles in the eye, saying, "Son, I think you're deliberately withholding information about a series of suspicious deaths," and walking away from the conversation with their relationship still intact. It wasn't as though things weren't already fragile between them.

Connecting the death of the Chaplin boy and the Hale girl and all the other strange goings-on had been like trying to put together a jigsaw puzzle without being able to look at the box; he could see all the pieces, and he had a definite sense that they all fit together somehow, but he was lacking the key to fitting them together.

John actually started a little as Stiles walked into the kitchen, rolling his neck on his shoulders. He immediately went to the kitchen cupboard, pulled out three granola bars and shoved them into his pockets like a squirrel collecting food for winter.

Seeing that the kid was about to walk out again, John said in a casual tone, 'You feel like helping me out with something, Stiles?'

'I did the dishes _last_ night,' Stiles protested immediately.

John smiled. 'Not the dishes. Though if you're in the mood...' He looked at Stiles' face. 'No, OK.' He picked up a file from the desk and flipped it open.

Stiles raised an eyebrow. 'Autopsy photos?'

'Not exactly. When that kid Benny was killed...' He saw the muscles in Stiles' face tighten almost imperceptibly, but pretended not to have noticed. 'This couple came to the crime scene and started taking photos. Said they worked for one of those hokey magazines that writes about abominable snowmen and pixies, that sort of thing.'

'Uh-huh,' Stiles affirmed, his voice sounding ever so slightly strained.

'Well we took the camera off them and told them that they could pick it up once we'd wiped all the pictures, but they never showed up at the office.'

'Yeah? Was it a nice camera? Can I have it?'

John rolled his eyes. 'Here's the odd thing,' he went on, handing the file over to Stiles. 'We pulled the photos off the camera. No touristy stuff, just weird close-ups of trees and photos of the forest floor. But look a little closer...' He pointed to the photo that Stiles was looking at, of one of the trees in the preserve. 'I think they were actually tracking some kind of animal. Look, the tree trunks have claw marks, and these pictures of the dirt - you can actually see animal tracks in them.'

Stiles was biting his lip thoughtfully as he flipped through the photos. 'And they never came back for these?'

'No. They didn't even protest too much when I took the camera off them. It's almost like they wanted me to see these photos.'

'So what, these people think there's a... a sasquatch in Beacon Hills or something?' Stiles laughed, though it sounded a little thin and humourless to John's ears.

'Honestly, Stiles? I don't know what to think. I mean, it sort of fits with what we already know. There are all these people getting clawed up by an animal that we can't identify, there was that attack at the video store with your friend, uh...'

'Jackson,' Stiles said, grimly. 'Then there was that time Lydia got attacked...'

'Right. We still haven't been able to catch anything, though, so what if...' John realised that Stiles was no longer paying attention. He was staring off into the distance, his mouth hanging open as though in sudden realisation. 'Stiles?' John prompted.

'I, uh... Dad, I just remembered I've got to...' The sentence trailed away as Stiles more or less fled the house, not even bothering to grab his jacket on the way out. John stared after him for a second before darting to the door to yell something, to call him back, but when he opened the front door again Stiles was nowhere to be seen.

* * *

'Lydia! _Lydia!_ ' Stiles wouldn't characterise what he was doing as hammering on the Martins' front door, but he suspected that to the untrained eye it might look like he was doing just that.

He had a strong suspicion that Lydia actually waited to see if he would just go away before finally coming to the front door. She pulled it open, looking a little pale but still as beautiful as ever and smelling like - oh god, was that mango? Passionfruit, maybe. It must have been something in her shampoo, judging by the way her strawberry-blonde locks were bouncing healthily on her shoulders, freshly-washed and...

'Stiles,' Lydia hissed like a cat. 'Why exactly are you trying to break down my door?'

'I, uh... I, uhhh...' Stiles looked around desperately, then leapt out of view of the doorway for half a second before returning to a still-furious Lydia, a fistful of flowers in his hands with their roots still trailing and dropping dirt everywhere. 'I came to... see if you were feeling better and, uh, bring you some flowers.'

'You just ripped them out of my flowerbed,' Lydia said coldly.

Stiles looked despondently down at the flowers in his hand. 'They're extra-fresh?' he said hopefully.

Lydia didn't make any motions that indicated she might be about to let her in, but at that moment Stiles heard a shrill yip from down by her feet. He looked down and saw one of those creepy little toy dogs with big fluffy bat ears.

'Prada, go inside,' Lydia instructed sternly, nudging the dog with her foot.

Seeing a way in, Stiles knelt down so that he was more or less face-to-face with the little rat. Making sure that Lydia couldn't see, he slowly let the gold burn into his eyes. Prada yipped one more time, and then looked at him with great interest.

'Hey, Prada,' he said, mostly for Lydia's benefit so she wouldn't think he was just a weirdo in a staring competition with a dog.

Prada daintily placed a paw on his knee to lift herself up and started licking his nose enthusiastically.

'I guess she recognises her own kind,' Lydia commented from somewhere above them.

Stiles straightened up fast, tipping Prada off his knee. He was aware that his nose was probably shiny with dog saliva and that it wasn't too sexy a look for him, but he was panicking too much to wipe it off. 'W-what?' he stammered.

Lydia raised her eyebrows. ' _Dogs_.'

Stiles turned this over in his mind for a second, then almost collapsed in relief. 'You're insulting me!'

'You catch on fast.'

'Does this mean our brief romance is over?'

'You mean when you took me to the dance and I nearly got eaten? It's not the best relationship I've ever had, Stiles.' But there was a small smile just flirting at the edges of Lydia's mouth. She looked him up and down appraisingly and then said, 'Well, don't just stand there. Come in.'

She turned and went into the house without waiting for an answer. Stiles looked down at Prada, who had her tongue hanging out happily, and he quickly rubbed a hand over his nose before following the woman of his dreams into her house. Her empty house. With no parents in it. Oh god, he was doomed.

Lydia sashayed into the kitchen, looking far too elegant for someone wearing a flannel bathrobe, took a bottle of some fancy liqueur from a rack and set it down next to two glasses. She poured out a couple of measures of the strong smelling, viscous drink and walked back over to the breakfast bar where she set one done and started sipping from the other. Stiles walked over hesitantly and picked up his own glass.

'Should you be drinking alcohol?' he asked, trying to sound casual. 'I mean, aren't you still on pain meds or...?'

'Alcohol is a pain med,' she told him coolly. 'So why did you come all the way over here?' She eyed the crushed flowers that he had laid down on the breakfast bar. 'Just to bring me my own flowers?'

'No, I... uh.' Stiles had no idea how to begin. _Why aren't you a werewolf?_ sounded a bit blunt. 'How have you been feeling? Any, uh, symptoms?'

'These stupid cuts are taking forever to heal, but my mom took me to see a cosmetic surgeon and apparently I can get them treated so that they won't scar too badly.'

'Good, that's good.' Suddenly desperate for a bit of extra courage, Stiles picked up his glass and downed the contents, feeling them burn his throat as he swallowed. Without asking, he quickly grabbed the bottle and topped the glass up again. 'And did you... do you remember doing anything after you were attacked? Anything unusual or strange or...'

'Aside from bleeding a lot?' Lydia shook her head and bit her plump lower lip, suddenly looking a little upset. 'No. I woke up in the hospital a couple of days afterwards, and then I came back here and got a lot of bedrest. That's it.'

Stiles nodded and tried not to look to disappointed. He downed his second glass of the sticky, strong drink and Lydia watched him do it.

'You don't look like much, Stilinski,' she said thoughtfully, sounding a little impressed. 'But you drink like a champ.'

Looking as though she'd suddenly made up her mind about something, Lydia walked around the breakfast bar, trailing her fingers over it. Stiles swallowed hard as she came to stand close to him, her hand just touching his arm.

'It was nice of you to come and visit me,' she said, her eyes huge and uncharacteristically soft as she looked up at him. 'Not many people have.'

Passionfruit. Her shampoo was definitely passionfruit-scented. Stiles struggled to control his breathing as he realised he could hear Lydia's heart beating a little faster. She moved a little closer and he tried to subtly move his hips back a little so that she wouldn't feel that he was, _fuck_ , he was getting hard.

Then, something deep inside his gut growled at him to move his hips forward instead, to be aggressive, to push his hardness against her side and make sure she could _feel_ it and yeah, just pick her up, take her upstairs... maybe not even that far, maybe just lay her down on the floor. He could tell that she wasn't wearing anything under her robe and he felt a rumble in his chest as he imagined how easy it would be to just pull at the ribbon tying it closed, push it off her shoulders and...

Lydia laughed softly. 'Stiles, did you just _growl_ at me?'

She sounded pleased by the idea and so he let it happen again, just let that small sound bubble up and escape, and Lydia laughed a little again when she heard it. Mesmerised, he pushed a hand into her hair, threaded his fingers into it and felt the dampness in some of the deeper layers where it hadn't quite dried and with a thrill he realised that she was getting excited.

Lydia lifted her heels off the floor a little and brought her lips very close to Stiles', so close that he could feel her smile. 'I'm glad you came over,' she purred.

'I wanted to,' Stiles heard himself reply, and his voice sounded nothing like it normally did. It was deep and dangerous, and he could hear the wolf in it.

'Jackson hasn't even come to visit once.'

Everything seemed to stop for a moment, and when time started again it was as though Stiles had suddenly woken up. One of his hands was in Lydia's hair and the other was on her waist, near to where Peter had bitten her. She was under the influence of some combination of painkillers, alcohol and possibly some weird werewolf mojo that Stiles was giving off, and he was seriously considering taking advantage of the situation? In the full knowledge that she was only doing this because she wanted to feel wanted after Jackson's abandonment? Lydia Martin, the girl who he'd liked since before he even knew that he liked girls. What the _hell_ was Stiles doing?

He took his hands off Lydia and backed away slowly, suddenly terrified of himself. He kept his eyes closed for a moment until he could be sure that they were no longer glowing and then looked up at Lydia, who looked confused and a little pissed off.

'I'm gonna go,' Stiles said huskily. He cleared his throat. 'I'm glad... I'm glad you're feeling better.'

'Stiles!' Lydia exclaimed, following him to the door.

He opened it himself, but stood on the doorstep for a moment with his hand on the latch and looked back at her.

'Jackson's an idiot,' he said sadly. Then he walked away before he said anything else that he might regret.


	8. Chapter 8

Stiles had things under control.

He was drifting farther and farther away from his best friend out of paranoia that Scott would literally sniff him out and he could tell that Scott was a little confused and hurt by this. Lydia was back at school and was treating him even more frostily than she ever had before, if such a thing was even possible. His father had gone from regular interrogations to just staring at Stiles with a troubled expression whenever he thought his son wasn't looking, and talking only about cursory things when they did speak.

But things were under control. Stiles had started using yoga and meditation, two things the he'd never before thought his scattershot mind could handle, to strengthen his grip on the transformation. He could get through lacrosse practice, no matter how many times he was frustrated by people refusing to pass him the ball or Jackson and his cronies deliberately bumping him with their shoulders, without so much as a whisper of fang or a faint glow of gold in his eyes. In Stiles' mind, he pictured himself putting the wolf in a stranglehold, cutting off its oxygen and watching it slip into a deep coma, and he felt a deep and vicious triumph.

Then, the night before the night of the full moon, everything fell apart.

It started earlier that day. Stiles had found it even more difficult to concentrate in class than usual, and had actually snapped at Miss Morrell when she gently chided him for staring out of the window when she was talking in French class. She didn't punish him, but he had a nasty feeling that she was going to start bugging him to come along to a counselling session.

Had it not been such am emasculating thought, Stiles would have characterised how he felt as being exactly like intense PMS. He felt angry at everything and at the same he felt an overwhelming need to  _fuck_ something, or at the very least jerk off. He could actually feel the wolf rippling inside the cage of his skin, growling to get out, perhaps knowing that the time was coming when it would have rightful custody over his body.

It was a relief to get out of school and he walked quickly across the parking lot to his Jeep. He heard footsteps running along behind him and his nostrils flared as he struggled to control his breathing.

'Hey,' Scott called, catching up to Stiles and pulling his backpack a little higher up his shoulder. 'Can I get a ride home?' He sounded tentative. He never would have had to ask before.

'You don't even live that far away,' Stiles replied shortly. _And it's not like you're going to give me gas money_ , he added meanly in his head, though of course he'd never asked for such a thing. He knew that Scott and his mom didn't have all that much to live on.

'I have work tonight,' Scott explained. 'I'm running late already.'

'So? You can probably run faster than my Jeep.'

Scott laughed uncertainly, as if trying to figure out whether or not this was a joke. When Stiles didn't laugh back he exclaimed, 'I can't just go running through the streets of Beacon Hills in wolf mode!'

'How is that my problem? If you knew you had to get to work you should have left school earlier.' Stiles pointedly opened the driver side door of his Jeep, but Scott caught him by the arm and suddenly all of Stiles' energy was focused on not turning round and tearing his best friend's throat out.

'Stiles, what's going on?' Scott asked, his eyes wide. He didn't sound angry, just confused and hurt and a little apologetic. 'Did I do something? Why have you been acting so...?'

'Go away, Scott,' Stiles said, trying to making it sound like a warning rather than an insult. He could make up for this later, maybe wear some heavy-duty aftershave and go to the movies with him, or even hang out and talk about Allison. Right now, though, Stiles just needed to be somewhere far away from other people.

Unfortunately, Scott didn't seem to be in the mood to let him go. 'I'm sorry, he whined, not taking his hand off Stiles. 'Whatever I've done, I'm sorry, but can you just...?'

'You haven't done anything,' Stiles snapped. 'God, Scott, do you have to be so pathetic?'

Scott jerked his arm away, and now he was starting to look a little mad. _Good_ , Stiles thought.

'Dude, I don't know what's up with you lately but you're acting like a real jerk!'

'There's nothing up with me,' Stiles retorted, climbing into his Jeep. 'Better get moving, Scott. You're late for work.'

He slammed the door before Scott could come up with a response and drove away from the school like it was on fire.

* * *

Stiles thought that things would get easier when he got home and could shut himself up in his room, but although freedom from prying eyes meant that he could scowl and sulk as much as he wanted, he still felt stifled. He tried to masturbate, but grew too impatient and gave up with a growl, knowing that it wouldn't be enough. He tried to sleep, but he wasn't tired. He just wanted the stupid full moon to be over already so that he could get back to his normal life and start making reparations, but he'd have to wait another day and a half. It felt like an impossibly long time.

After three interminable hours, Stiles heard his dad's cruiser in the driveway and found that even _that_ pissed him off. He just couldn't handle either his father's meaningful glances or another stupid session of demands and questions right now, and so he pointedly ignored it when the Sheriff called out a greeting, and then continued to ignore him when, an hour or so later, he yelled up the stairs that dinner was ready.

When he heard his dad ascending the staircase, Stiles threw himself onto his bed, rolled over on his side, and pointedly pretended to be asleep. His door creaked open and Stiles gritted his teeth.

'Stiles, didn't you hear me calling? Food's done, come downstairs.'

'Go away.'

'"Go away?'" John laughed, and Stiles gritted his teeth furiously. 'You're not five years old, Stiles. Come on, shake a leg.'

'I'm sick.'

'Sick how?' He sounded sceptical, but he approached the bed anyway.

'Sick like I just want to be left alone.'

There was a pause, and then Stiles heard a soft, knowing chuckle. 'Oh, it's that kind of sick. What did Lydia do now?'

'Nothing. And don't fucking patronise me, dad.'

A long, breathless silence followed, in which Stiles' heart pounded with a mix of trepidation and triumph. His dad would never normally let him get away with swearing like that, even if it was at an inanimate object, and Stiles had more or less just handed himself a week of being grounded at the very least.

When John spoke again, he no longer sounded amused. 'Get your ass downstairs. _Now_.'

Swallowing a snarl, Stiles rolled out of bed and stalked out of the room, walking pointedly around his father as John deliberately planted himself in his son's path. Stiles even grazed him with his shoulder on the way past - not quite a shoulder bump, but something that was aspiring to be one.

There was food on the table - lasagne - but suddenly Stiles couldn't stomach the thought of eating. He walked right past the dining room and carried on towards the front door. He could hear his father following him and talking, but didn't pay attention.

'You're going to eat your damn meal and then we are going to have a conversation about... where the hell do you think you're going?'

'Out,' Stiles replied unnecessarily as he opened the door.

'I don't think so, Stiles, now get to that table and _sit down_.'

Stiles ignored him and carried on walking, leaving the front door wide open just for the hell of it. He could hear his father chasing him down and suddenly Stiles lost it and just ran. Not in wolf mode, but fast enough to leave his father a long way behind, cutting across yards and alleyways so that he couldn't be followed in the police cruiser.

About three blocks away Stiles picked up a scent that made him stop for a moment. He breathed it in, feeling his frayed nerves calming a little, and then began to follow it, almost without thinking.

Beacon Hills wasn't the kind of area that really had a bad part of town, but Stiles soon found himself walking in the baddest part anyway: a claustrophobic urban neighbourhood full of high rise buildings where the poorer kids at school mostly lived. It was starting to get dark and there were a few shady characters hanging out on street corners and lurking in doorways, who looked Stiles over as he hurried past them with that tantalising scent in his nostrils.

He glared back at them, using his last threads of self-control to keep his eyes from glowing. _Yeah, come over here and start something_ , he thought eagerly, trying to project his thoughts directly at them. _I'll give you something more than a black eye to take home._

Perhaps it was because he was radiating real threat, but no one so much as called out to him, and soon enough Stiles found himself in even dingier streets, in the partially-abandoned warehouse district of town. An old railway line ran through here, overgrown and disused now, and Stiles walked over the tracks as he continued to track whatever it is that was drawing him in.

The trail took him to a warehouse building on the other side of the tracks, and Stiles kicked at the door experimentally. He could practically see the scent heavily overlaid on the door handle, and he touched it and turned it, only to find the door bolted from the other side. Suddenly furious at being thwarted, Stiles kicked the door again, and then again - harder - determined to break in somehow.

He took a few steps back, preparing to run at the door and smash it down, when suddenly it opened of its own accord and Derek was stood there, scowling intensely, then widening his eyes in surprise at the sight of Stiles. He was dressed more casually than Stiles had ever seen him, in black sweatpants and a thinning, old, gray T-shirt that had a few holes in it and a little sweat gathered under the arms, as though Derek had been working out.

'What the hell are you doing here?' he demanded.

'What am _I_ doing here?' Stiles shot back. 'What are you doing here?'

'I live here. What are _you_ doing here?' Derek repeated, his eyes flashing red for just a bare moment.

'I...' Stiles walked a little closer. That scent was overpowering now - thick and heady and comforting, taking the edge off his fury - and he groaned as he realised what it was. 'I smelled you.'

'You _smelled_ me?' Derek echoed, his eyebrows crawling towards his hairline.

'Followed your scent here.' Stiles took another few steps forward, until he was a bare arm's length away from Derek. He was tempted to press in even closer, but this was enough to cool him off a little.

Derek swore under his breath. 'Damn. Get inside.'

He grabbed Stiles by the back of his neck, and Stiles felt tension that he hadn't even known was in him bleed out of his muscles. He nearly collapsed just at the feel of Derek's fingers gripping him and guiding him into the building, like a kitten being carried around in its mother's mouth. The relaxation faded, however, when Derek threw him halfway across the warehouse.

Stiles landed on the concrete floor in a heap and was on his feet again a moment later, breathing heavily in anger. 'What do you think you're...?'

'If you can follow me here then the other werewolf can. The one that murdered that kid,' Derek said, almost to himself. He scrubbed a hand furiously through his hair and paced back and forth, as though he'd forgotten that Stiles was even there.

'You're hiding,' Stiles said aloud as it dawned on him. 'You're hiding out here because you're scared!'

Derek stopped pacing and, yeah, he was definitely aware of Stiles' existence now. 'I barely have a pack,' he growled. 'My only beta wants nothing to do with me. Are you starting to see why I might want to avoid a conflict right now?'

'I'm. Not. Your. _Fucking_. Beta!' Stiles screamed at him.

To his fury, Derek just laughed bitterly. Then he darted forward, too fast for Stiles to react, and grabbed him by the back of his head, pulling him in close, pressing Stiles' face to his own neck. 'No?' he rumbled, and Stiles felt the word vibrate in Derek's throat but it rarely registered because Stiles was drowning, drowning in the smell of him and the next thing he knew he was doing something humiliating, writhing like he was actually trying to climb up Derek's body.

Then quickly, brutally, Derek threw him away again. His back hit a pillar and he braced himself against it, glaring at Derek. 'What is that?' he demanded. 'Why do you smell like that?'

But Derek didn't answer. His eyes flickered over Stiles and his lip curled in disgust. 'You haven't wolfed out,' he observed slowly. 'Look how worked up you are... not even a fang.'

Stiles lifted his chin. 'I can control it,' he stated defiantly.

'No.' Derek shook his head and took a step closer, his eyes wide. ' _I_ control it. You've... you've caged it.' For a moment he looked like he was about to throw up, like he'd just walked into a basement full of dead cubs.

'So what?' Stiles asked, hearing the uncertainty creeping into his voice.

Derek took another step closer, his scent becoming overpowering. 'I'm at peace with my wolf. I stay looking human most of the time and I change when I need to, when I want to. But you... you stopped changing at all, didn't you? You locked the wolf up tight. You starved it of contact with your Alpha.'

'Good,' Stiles bit out. 'I hope it dies.'

Without warning, Derek flashed forward and slammed his fist into the pillar next to Stiles' head. 'You idiot,' he whispered vehemently. 'It's not going to just roll over and die. You can feel it inside you right now, can't you? Snarling to be let out. If you don't let it out voluntarily, it is going to _chew_ its way out of you, Stiles, and there won't be anything left when it's done.'

The words sent a chill into Stiles' bones. He swallowed hard. 'So I just... I need to let it out? Transform? Get it out of my system?' Reluctantly, he prepared to make the change.

'Stop,' Derek said urgently. He grabbed Stiles by the arm and began dragging him across the warehouse, towards a delapidated train carriage. Down the end of it was a pile of chains, and items that looked like torture devices. Stiles wriggled in the Alpha's grasp.

'What are you going to...?'

'Trust me.' Derek sat Stiles down in one of the subway chairs and clapped an iron chain onto his left ankle. Stiles jumped, and then immediately started pulling at it, finding that it was bolted into the side of the train carriage.

'What are you doing?' he yelled.

Derek leaned forward and cupped Stiles' face, pushing his neck close enough that Stiles could pull in some of his scent. 'You need to transform,' he said in an even tone. 'When you do, your wolf is going to run wild. I'll try to keep it contained, but we need to restrain you.'

With that, he picked up a chain that had a nasty looking device on the end: a thick band of metal with another, slimmer band looping up and over it, this one with a screw in the centre of it. Before Stiles could protest, Derek slid this down over his left hand and snapped it into place so that one band encased Stiles wrist and the other wrapped over it, passing between his ring and middle fingers.

'This is going to hurt,' Derek said. 'Tell me when you're ready.'

Stiles looked down at the screw, realised what Derek was saying, and felt a whimper crawl up out of his throat. 'Do I have to?'

'If you don't, the wolf will...'

'Do it,' Stiles said suddenly, on impulse, before he could chicken out.

Derek turned the screw quickly and deftly. For the first few seconds there was nothing but the squeak of the screw echoing around the carriage, then there was a tugging and twisting, and then there was sheer agony as the screw penetrated Stiles' hand and he was screaming and thrashing and using his free hand to punch Derek with all his might. Whether from his own pain or from listening to Stiles', Derek was whining in a high-pitched, breathy, entirely animal way, but he kept tightening until the screw met the skin of Stiles' palm from the inside, tented it out for a moment and then punched through, emerging blood-soaked to pass through a hole in the other side of the metal band.

'It's done,' Derek said, wheezing a little. Stiles opened his eyes and saw that Derek's arm, the one that Stiles had been punching, was hanging at an odd angle from his shoulder, the exposed skin hideous and purple and pulverised. Stiles swallowed hard as he saw what he had done, and for a brief second it took his mind off his own pain.

With his still-functional arm, Derek attached chains to Stiles' remaining wrist and ankle, and then finally wrapped a metal collar around his neck. Stiles took this passively, cradling his wounded hand in his whole one, and when it was done he looked up at Derek with a tear-streaked face.

'I'm scared,' he admitted. 'I've been... I've been acting like a psycho. I've said awful things to Scott, and to my dad, and I've wanted to... I've thought about killing people, Derek. What's going to happen, if I let the wolf out?'

'I don't know,' Derek replied. 'But I do know that it's something you need to do, Stiles.' He looked down at the teenager's impaled palm. 'The wolf won't exacerbate the wound,' he promised. 'It will be angry, and it will rage, but it won't rip itself free. I'll keep an eye on you, Stiles. I'll make sure it doesn't get out and hurt anybody.'

Stiles fought with the decision for a moment longer, but he could feel the creature scratching inside of him, like a hound at a locked doggy flap, and he knew that if he didn't let it out then soon it would start scratching harder and harder, and then it would start to bite.

'OK,' he mumbled. 'OK.'

Slowly, like entering the code to a safe, he began to loosen his grip on the creature inside him. His eyes flashed gold first, and the wolf bayed excitedly, and Stiles bayed with it. His teeth lengthened, and his nails turned into claws, but Stiles still kept one hand on the wheel.

 _Let go_ , he heard. _You have to let go_.

'I will,' he replied to Derek. 'Just, give me a minute...' But when he looked at Derek the older werewolf was only staring at him in puzzlement and trepidation.

_LET ME OUT!_

Stiles tipped his mouth back and he heard the windows of the train carriage rattle as he roared, triumphant and untamed. Terrified and euphoric, he let his mind slip underneath the waves and then disappear entirely.


	9. Chapter 9

'Sheriff, I understand how upset you must be, but...'

'Don't pretend you have any idea...'

'The rule is we have to wait 24 hours...'

'So we'll say he's been missing 24 hours!'

'But his friends saw him at school. Fudging a missing person's report, it doesn't... It won't necessarily make things go any smoother, Sheriff. Might even make things worse.'

John choked back another argument and reached up to rub the back of his neck with one hand. He hadn't got any sleep since the night before. Stupidly, _stupidly_ , he'd waited a couple of hours for Stiles to come back on his own, and when that hadn't happened he'd taken the car out and driven the streets, his temper rising alongside his anxiety. There'd been no sign of Stiles, and he'd left his phone in his room (when did he do that? when did he _ever_ do that?) so John couldn't contact him that way. He'd spent the entire night driving around and then returning home once every hour to see if Stiles had returned of his own volition, but he never did. By the time John had got to the station the following morning, he'd been a physical and emotional wreck.

Deputy Graham was looking at him with troubled sympathy. 'Look,' she said gently. 'We can't officially file a report yet but we can sure as hell start trying to track him down off the record. What exactly happened? Why did he take off?'

'I don't know, I...' John rubbed his hand over his face, massaging his tired eyes. 'He was in bed when he got home. He said he was sick, but he didn't look... I think he was upset about something. He gave me attitude and I yelled at him and he... he just walked out. And I let him go.'

'It's not your fault, Sheriff,' Graham said firmly. 'Come on, you know how often we've seen this when people's kids go missing. They go crazy trying to figure out exactly what they did to cause it, but sometimes... sometimes kids just take off. Thinking about what you could have done won't help Stiles.' She paused, thinking to herself. 'Did you call his friend... what's his name?'

'Scott. Yeah, of course. He didn't answer his phone so I went to his house. Scott was at work and Melissa said she hadn't seen Stiles at all.'

'OK,' Graham said. 'I'm going to call up the hospital.'

Bless her, she didn't say _and the morgue_ , but John knew that she was planning to cover all their bases. The word _morgue_ stuck in John's head anyway and with it came the thought of Stiles...

'Sheriff, I think you need to go lie down,' Graham said quietly. 'If only for half an hour. You won't be any use to Stiles if you're dead on your feet.'

John shook his head. 'No, I...'

'Go home,' she urged him. 'If Stiles comes back or he tries to call the house, then someone needs to be there for him. You know it makes sense.'

'I can't just sit at home like some kind of invalid while my son is out there, God only knows where,' John replied hotly. 'I'll assign a deputy to watch the house.'

'I think he's going to want you there, when he comes home,' Graham persisted. 'You said he was upset, and we don't know what kind of mindset he'll be in when he comes back.'

John tightened his jaw. 'Maybe I'm the last person he'll want to see.'

Graham hesitated, then laid a hand on his shoulder. 'Come on, Sheriff, I doubt there's a single teenager in the world who hasn't at some point yelled about how much they hate their parents. You two can work this out, whatever it is.'

He wished that it was true, but lately John had been finding it hard to imagine a time when he and Stiles didn't circle around each other cautiously, avoiding all the things that Stiles didn't want to talk about. Not just the killings and Stiles keeping secrets about them, but about Claudia as well. John worried that he didn't talk enough about her with Stiles, and for his part Stiles kept all his thoughts - the important ones - locked up too tight to access. John wished he had a theory about what had been upsetting his son last night, but to be honest it could be any one of the many things that Stiles didn't tell him about.

He nodded weary and, with a small amount of relief, Graham picked up the phone and prepared to start making phone calls. 'Wait at home, Sheriff,' she instructed, smiling in a comforting way. 'He'll come back, I'm sure of it.'

* * *

The next morning, Stiles still hadn't come home.

John had barely managed to drive to the station without crashing. He'd been subsisting on a diet of coffee in order to stay alert and was running on fumes, his hands shaking badly from the caffeine and his face actually starting to feel numb from lack of sleep.

Graham was waiting for him by the desk when he got in.

'Anything?' John asked, his voice the only thing about him that was still sharp.

To his surprise, Graham nodded eagerly. 'We've got a trail. It's not much, but we know which direction he headed in after he left your house.'

The station was a hive of activity. John hadn't hesitated to assign every officer on duty to the task of tracking down his wayward son. If they found him, he swore to himself that he'd fight for every single one of them to get a raise.

At Graham's desk, John found himself looking at a frozen image of a street in what looked like the east side of town, with all the high rise residential buildings, that was taken from a security camera image. Graham tapped the keyboard and the video started playing.

John watched transfixed. For a few seconds there was nothing but empty streets, but then he felt his heart lurch as Stiles appeared on the screen, in the clothes he'd been wearing when he ran out of the house. Some weird kind of lens flare prevented John from getting a good look at the expression on Stiles' face, but his body language was tense: he was walking quickly with his fists clenched at his side. He passed the lower edge of the screen and was gone again, and a second later the video ended.

'You OK, Sheriff?' Graham asked in a quiet, discreet voice as John massaged his chest and drew in a deep, shuddering breath.

'Do we know where he went next?' he asked shortly.

'We think so. Another camera picked him up just about to head into the warehouse district. We should take some dogs down there, try to track him while it's still possible. Can you find us a shirt or something that we can...'

'Yes.' John stood up, adrenaline flushing out some of his fatigue now that he had something proactive to do. 'Get a couple of dogs and some officers and meet me down there.'

* * *

It took a lot of self control, when he went into Stiles' room to find a shirt from his pile of unwashed laundry, not to sift through the papers on his desk or turn on his computer and try to get past Stiles' password. Search for some answers. John could justify it with the excuse that any kind of insight might be what he needed to find his son, but deep down he knew that what he really answered was an answer to everything that Stiles had been keeping from him this year.

There was no time, though. He grabbed Stiles' lacrosse practice shirt, choked back a gasp of pain as his mind cruelly flashed back to the ruined T-shirt, blood-stained and torn, that Stiles had tried to hide from him a few weeks ago. What if they found not just a bloodied T-shirt this time but...

John drove to the warehouse district with the siren on his cruiser blaring.

Graham flagged him down when he arrived. There were two squad cars already on the scene, and a few curious onlookers had gathered around to stare in the hope of some kind of excitement. John vainly tried to hide the lacrosse shirt from their view as he crouched down and held it out for the German Shepherds to snuffle at eagerly. Once they had the scent the two deputies who were handling them dragged them away to start looking for the scent.

'You think he's still out here?' Graham asked, walking over to join him.

'I don't know.' John hesitated, then admitted, 'I want to find him, of course I do, but at the same time I'm... I'm afraid of what we're going to find.' Suddenly he looked up sharply at the sight of a shadow lurking in a nearby alley. He tensed his shoulders, then sighed and called out. 'Scott! Get over here!'

There was a brief pause in which Scott was obviously deciding whether or not to just run away, then the teenager's shoulders fell and he slouched out of the alleyway looking guiltily. 'Hi, Sheriff,' he said with faux-nonchalance.

'I'm guessing you're not just in the area by coincidence,' John stated stiffly, looking Scott over. 'Listen, if you know anything...'

'I don't!' Scott burst out desperately, looking incredibly upset, and John could immediately tell that the kid wasn't lying. 'Stiles was acting really weird at school and we had a fight and he drove off and I haven't seen him since and I'm sorry I followed you but I just want to find him...'

John held up a hand to stop the flow of words. 'Alright, alright. I can't believe I'm saying this, but if we find Stiles then you might actually be useful. You can come along if you promise to do _exactly_ what I...'

'Sheriff!'

Scott temporarily forgotten, John whipped his head around so fast that he actually heard something in his neck click. The dogs were tugging eagerly at their leashes, noses pointed towards the nearby mess of warehouses.

'Let's move!' John called, beckoning to Scott to follow him as the cops trailed after whatever trail the dogs had picked up.

It felt like they had walked for a long time, and the dogs would occasionally meander around, smelling the ground and walking in circles as they tried to confirm the scent, until John had to bite his tongue in order to hold back from yelling at them impatiently. Once or twice he even saw Scott's nostrils flaring in sympathy, as though he could help the dogs to follow the trail.

They crossed a set of disused railway tracks, and then suddenly the dogs veered off the street and started barking and scratching at the door of an abandoned railway depot.

'There!' Scott said excitedly, starting to run towards the door. John considered pulling him back, but instead he did the exact same thing.

'Sheriff!' Graham called to him urgently, joining him at the door. 'We need to play this carefully, alright? We don't know what the situation is inside.' She raised her fist and pounded on the door loudly. 'This is the police, open up!'

They all held their collective breath, listening carefully, but no reply came. John glanced down and saw that Graham had one hand hovering near her firearm.

'Alright,' he said. 'We tried knocking, no one answered, we're going in.' To turned the handle and, to his surprise, the door opened easily. These disused buildings were usually sealed up pretty tight, which meant that someone must have broken the lock off.

He took a deep breath as he entered the depot. It was vacant, but there were a few signs of life around: empty takeout boxes piled in the corner, a pile of blankets by the wall that looked like someone had been sleeping there, with a few books piled up next to them. John breathed a small, sigh of slight relief; there were no signs of foul play so far. It looked as though Stiles had come out here and made a half-assed attempt at setting up an independent residence.

'Stiles!' he called out. 'You in here?' There was no reply. 'I'm not angry, Stiles, I just want you to come home.' John's voice very nearly cracked on the last word, but he managed to catch it in time.

The dogs were butting at the backs of his legs to get past, and John stood aside and allowed them to do so, watching as the two deputies followed them over to an abandoned train carriage. His breathing had calmed down a little now. They would wait here for Stiles to return, and they'd talk and he'd come home and it was all going to be...

'Sheriff.'

John could have sworn he actually felt his heart stop. He _knew_ that tone. That wasn't a "we found your stupid kid in here reading a comic book" tone. People only said his name that way when they needed him to come over as soon as possible, but didn't want to say the reason aloud for fear of upsetting anyone who might be listening in. It also sounded as though the deputy had hesitated for a moment before deciding to call.

Holding a hand out to Scott as a silent instruction that he should stay back, John approached the train carriage, every step feeling heavy and measured. He could see the deputy just inside the door, staring down towards one end of the train with a grim expression as his dog pulled impatiently at its leash.

John stepped inside the metal coffin of the carriage. He looked in the same direction as the deputy, down towards the far end of the train, and suddenly felt the awful and distantly familiar feeling of the ground falling out of his world.


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just want to say a massive thank you to everyone who has read, reviewed, kudosed or shared this story so far. You're all awesome.

When Stiles woke up, the first thing he noticed was that there wasn't a single bit of him that didn't ache. It didn't feel like muscle strain or a fever, it just felt like a dull pain that was afflicting every pore in his body. He groaned loudly and grouchily and rolled over, sticking to the cold, tacky floor and bumping up against something quite hot that was lying nearby.

Finally, Stiles lifted his aching eyelids and realised with no small amount of shock that he had woken up on the set of a horror film. The interior of the train carriage was splattered with blood in long, curving arcs, some of it congealed and some of it still dripping. Here and there he could make out tiny gobbets of flesh that had stuck to the walls. The smell, to his werewolf senses, was overbearing and rank and maddening, but Stiles' hairier side didn't feel like it was bristling underneath his skin any more. Rather, it felt as though it was lying dormant, its side heaving with exhausted breaths and eyes closed in a light, satiated doze.

Stiles rolled his head over to one side and saw Derek, and his first thought was that he was going to need to find a new werewolf expert because Derek was clearly dead. No one could look like that and still be alive.

It wasn't really possible to make out any precise injuries on his body, because the whole thing was just a mess. It looked like someone had shoved Derek up against a giant cheese grater and scrubbed him on it _hard_. Shredded clothes were tangled up with shredded flesh and bits that really should have been covered up by Derek's skin were exposed to the air and swimming in a swamp of blood.

Derek's face, meanwhile, was divided by four long, curving cuts that slashed diagonally across it like war paint. His eyes were closed and he had a splattered mess of black blood all around his mouth that looked kind of like he'd grown a beard overnight. There were small bubbles in it, though, and it was at that point that Stiles realised that Derek was doing something that, for lack of a better word, could be described as breathing. It was a sort of croaky, chattery, weak inhale and exhale of oxygen into lungs that had to have taken a pummelling, but it was there, and listening closely Stiles picked up the sound of a thready, uncertain heartbeat.

Stiles licked his lips, feeling his panic steadily catching up to him like the fat kid in a cross country run and knowing that he was going to start freaking out and/or throwing up really quite soon. 'Derek?' he whispered, scrambling onto his hands and knees and kneeling over the werewolf's tattered body. 'Oh my God, Derek, are you dying? Please don't be dying.'

After a worrying delay, Derek's eyebrows twitched into a frown and he half opened his eyes to slits. He peered up at Stiles through the mask of his ruined face and parted his lips a little, strings of partially-congealed blood bridging between them as he murmured. 'St'l...'

It took Stiles a few moments to figure out why Derek was looking blearily afraid, trying to twitch himself into a defensive position and failing. 'Oh crap,' Stiles moaned, suddenly bringing up a hand to cover his mouth. 'Oh my... I did this to you.'

He reached out to do... something - touch Derek's face or hold his hand or find some part of him that wasn't bleeding and brush his fingers over it in reassurance, but was pulled up short by a twinge of pain in his own hand. Holding it up in front of his face he saw the screw still piercing his palm, the flesh around it hot and possibly infected, the edges of the wound puckering. The metal cuff around his wrist had a few inches of broken chain dangling from it, and after a moment Stiles noticed that none of his other limbs were restrained any more.

 _I'm a monster_ , Stiles thought very clearly and with great certainty, looking from the torn chains at his wrists and ankles to Derek's prone body. _I'm everything I tried to pretend that I wasn't. I'm worse than Derek. I'm worse than Peter. I need to be put down._

In a kind of numb fury, he grabbed the two butterfly wings holding the screw in place and began twisting them, abruptly and jerkily, drawing the screw slowly out of his hand. Every twist hurt, possibly even more than when it had gone in, and by the time Stiles had pulled it dripping from his hand he was sobbing quietly in the back of his throat.

'St'ls...'

Reluctantly, Stiles lifted his head again to look at Derek, who had been watching him through the slits of his eyes. Stiles swallowed hard and noticed a tiny, bare patch of unharmed skin of Derek's shoulder, exposed where his thin T-shirt had been torn away. Stiles hesitated for a moment and then placed his intact hand on it in a kind of comforting gesture.

'Are you going to die?' he asked Derek in as steady a voice as he could muster.

There was a pause, as though Derek was assessing the situation, and then he said, 'No,' in a slightly more normal voice. As an afterthought he added, 'Healing.'

The cuts on Derek's face did look slightly less deep now. Stiles was afraid to look at the rest of him again, but he knew that Derek must be in agony just by the careful tightness in his face, and wished with all his might that he could do something to ease the pain a little.

They sat there in silence for a couple of minutes, Stiles at a loss for what to say. Then he heard, quietly, 'Stiles.'

'Yeah?' he answered quickly. 'What? What do you need?'

'Do you...' Derek coughed before continuing. 'Do you know that you're doing that?'

'Doing what?'

Derek rolled his head to one side and gave something that looked like it could have been a nod. Stiles looked down and drew in a breath sharply, for the hand that he'd placed on Derek's shoulder was now threaded with thick, black veins that crawled about halfway up his arm before disappearing from view. His first instinct was to tear his hand away, but he didn't know what that might do.

'What's happening?' Stiles asked. 'What is that?'

Derek's eyes were closed and he looked a little blissed-out. 'You're... taking my pain,' he replied simply. 'Thank... you.'

Stiles held back from saying "you're welcome" because it wasn't like Derek was really in a position to be thanking him. Instead he tightened his grip a little and concentrated harder on drawing the pain from Derek as the werewolf slowly healed.

'Careful,' Derek said, his voice stronger now. 'Don't go overboard.'

'You need this,' Stiles said tersely, not looking Derek in the eye. 'I really messed you up.' There was no reply to that, and so he suddenly exclaimed, 'Why didn't you stop me? You're an Alpha! You could have taken me to pieces.'

'A beta isn't much good to me in pieces.'

'I'm not...' Stiles suddenly bit down on his usual response, deciding that he'd let Derek get away with it this time. 'How are you feeling?' he asked tentatively.

'Better,' Derek replied, sounding a little drugged from the werewolf morphine or whatever it was that Stiles was doing to him. Hesitantly, Stiles looked down at Derek's torso. It still looked like a total disaster area but the blood was starting to look less wet and more dried on, and he thought he could see a few more patches of cohesive skin. As an afterthought, Stiles glanced down at his own hand and saw that there was no longer a hole clear through it; a webbing of flesh had grown over in the centre of the wound and was starting to swell outwards.

Stiles started to feel a little dizzy and his other arm was itching like crazy, so he reluctantly took his hand off Derek's shoulder, making a note to himself to grill Derek on that particular werewolf power later. Derek was moving now, experimentally, stretching his legs out and twitching his fingers as though he was impatient to get up and on his feet again. The cuts on his face were now nothing but four thin, red lines.

Suddenly, Derek went very still. 'Listen,' he hissed.

'What?' Stiles did as he was told, and consciously expanded his field of hearing, searching for something that would put that worried expression on Derek's voice.

'I hear dogs.' Derek furrowed his brow. 'And voices. Cops.'

'My dad?' Stiles' eyes widened as he remember the last conversation he'd had with his father, and how they'd left it. That had been the night _before_ the night of the full moon, and by now the full moon must have passed. 'Oh my God...'

'He can't find us like this,' Derek said urgently. 'I'm not healed yet, if they see...'

'I know, I know!' Stiles thought carefully, and then crawled over to the nearest open doorway and stuck his feet out of it, starting to undo the laces on his sneakers.

'What are you doing? They're getting closer!'

'I know,' Stiles snapped, pulling his sneakers off altogether. 'But if we leave a trail of bloody footprints then they'll be able to follow us. Now come here.'

Stiles put his bloody shoelaces between his teeth, grimacing at the taste, and held them there. Derek managed to scuttle backwards a little, groaning at each movement and leaking small amounts of fresh blood as he did so. When he was close enough, Stiles dropped down onto the cold concrete outside, leaned inside the door and - ignoring Derek's protest - picked the man up bridal-style and pulled him over the threshold of the train.

Derek was heavy, but nothing that Stiles' werewolf strength couldn't handle, and once he was settled Stiles opened his mouth and allowed his sneakers to drop onto Derek's stomach, unfortunately landing on one of his many wounds.

'Sorry,' Stiles said in response to Derek's small yelp of pain. 'Is there another way out of here? I think they're going to come in the same way I did.'

'Back door. Behind the train.'

Still cradling Derek in his arms, Stiles hurried around the side of the train. The door on the other side was shut, and so Stiles braced his back against the cool metal of the train carriage, lifted his leg and turned the handle with his bare toes. The door sprung open just as a loud knocking came at the other entrance, and Stiles heard one of the deputies yelling at them to open up.

'Move, move, move,' Derek hissed.

'Do you wanna carry me instead?' Stiles shot back in an angry whisper as he made his way down an alleyway that divided the train depot from the warehouse next to it. 'Which way should I go?'

'There's some woodland next to the estate that connects to the preserve,' Derek replied, his voice tight and tense. 'We can use it to get back to my house.'

Stiles nodded tensely. He had one hand tucked under Derek's knees and fisted in the material of his sweatpants, the other curving under Derek's back and holding him by the shoulder, which meant that Derek's head just hung backwards at an awkward angle unless he made an effort to lift it. Stiles was doing his best to hold him still, so that the blood swimming on his skin wouldn't drip onto the ground. Derek was healing, his skin feverishly hot as his metabolism worked at full crank, but he still wasn't looking too good.

The entire unpleasant journey would stick in Stiles' memory for many, many years to come. By the time they made it to the treeline Derek was just about well enough to move independently, but was in no condition to be running and had to lean heavily on Stiles as the two of them limped in the direction of the preserve. After two miles and over an hour of very slow walking, Derek finally seemed to be intact again, but the two of them were soaked in blood and had to dodge out of sight of hikers and dog walkers on multiple occasions. By the time the Hale house appeared through the trees, Stiles was exhausted from being on edge for so long.

Derek trod heavily up the steps and let himself into the house, leaving the door open behind him as an unspoken invitation. By the time Stiles had hesitantly followed him inside, Derek had already shed the remnants of his shirt and was scowling critically at his torso, which bore a pattern of paling lines.

'Are you...?'

'I'm fine, Stiles.'

Stiles shook his head in amazement. 'I thought you were dead for sure,' he admitted.

'Lucky for us both that I'm not.'

'What am I going to do?' Stiles pleaded. 'They followed my scent to that train depot, they're gonna know that I was there. All that blood...'

'Deny all knowledge,' Derek said grimly. 'They haven't found a body, no one's missing, and if they do tests the only thing they'll find is animal blood. If your father isn't convinced by lies then just tell him the truth and make sure he knows how important it is to keep this stuff a secret.'

'Tell him the truth?' Stiles echoed in disbelief. 'I... no!' He couldn't believe that Derek would suggest such a thing so calmly.

Derek shrugged. 'He's going to find out his son is a werewolf sooner or later. Your dad's not an idiot.'

'He won't find out,' Stiles insisted furiously. 'I'll be careful.'

'Careful?' Derek laughed with an edge of bitterness and waved a hand to indicate his scarred stomach and chest. 'If this is what happens when you're careful, I'd hate to see you being careless.'

'Woah, hold on...'

'No, _you_ hold on,' Derek snapped. 'I've humoured your little "I'm not really a werewolf" teen rebellion act for a while, because pretty much all werewolves go through some denial at some point, but now it's time for you to grow up, Stiles.'

'Grow up?' Stiles laughed, a little shrilly. 'Grow up and be like you, you mean? Why don't you tell me what's so damn grown up about your life, Derek? The part where you hide in abandoned buildings shaking with fear because there's another werewolf nearby, or the part where you're squatting in a burnt-out house for years crying about your dead family?'

It was at that point, or shortly afterwards, that Derek picked Stiles up by the throat and threw him out of the house. He didn't bother to open the door first.

* * *

The train depot was a lot more crowded now, with a couple of forensics specialists crouched in the carriage to take photos of the blood spray patterns and the claw marks in the walls, and to samples from the scene. They'd been in there less than two minutes before John heard the words "animal attack" and had to grit his teeth in order to prevent an outburst. _Another_ supposed animal attack? Out here, where it would make no sense for a mountain lion or wolf or any other kind of large animal to be living?

It would be a while before they were able to answer the question that John was dreading, and which plagued every part of his mind. If the blood had come from Stiles, if it was Stiles' blood... that was more blood than one human could lose and still be alive. Thrumming under every one of John's thoughts and actions was the rhythmic chant of _my son could be dead, Stiles could be dead, Stiles is probably dead..._

John had thought about this scenario a lot. Ever since he'd lost Claudia, he had been unable to avoid thoughts of what could happen to Stiles. For the first few months he'd actually refused to let Stiles leave the house by himself, which was awful, but all he'd been able to think about were the cars and trucks which thundered down the road and the million ways that a kid could slip or fall and the kind of scum that you heard about all the time as a cop, guys who got caught with bloodstained children's clothes kept in their houses as trophies.

Despite all the times he got exasperated with him, and the headaches that had been caused by Stiles' hyperactivity before he'd got his Adderall prescription, and the current worries that stemmed frombStiles' secrecy and refusal to stay out of police business, John loved his son with a terrifying intensity. If he lost him, if it turned out that the blood belonged to Stiles and that someone or something had taken John's son from him, he would not rest until justice had been dealt. After that, though, he had no idea how he would cope. If he'd just left Stiles alone the other night, if he'd just let him sleep...

John was pacing back and forth by the makeshift bed, looking at the books piled up beside it. _Jude the Obscure_ , _Frankenstein_ , _The Art of War_... were these books that Stiles was studying at school? John honestly had no idea, and the realisation drove another stake of guilt into his heart.

He turned away from his officers when an actual tear ran down his cheek and he felt himself hovering on the edge of a breakdown. There was little time for recovery, though, as in the next moment his phone rang sharply in his pocket, and he was forced to try and compose himself as he pulled it out, expecting someone from the office or possible the state police that he'd called.

The caller ID said _Stiles_.

For a moment it felt as though every muscle in John's body had locked up at the same time. Then he hurriedly thumbed the button to answer the call and lifted the phone to his ear.

'Hello?' he asked, almost hesitantly.

' _It's me, Dad_.'

John actually collapsed in relief. It was lucky that there was a nearby wall for him to lean against. 'Stiles. Are you OK? Are you hurt?'

' _I'm fine, Dad. I'm at home. I'm OK. I'm so, so sorry about running off like that, I_...'

'It's OK, son, just stay where you are, stay exactly where you are, you got it? I'm coming straight home, I'll be there in twenty minutes, tops.'

' _You don't have to... I'm really OK, Dad, I just_...'

'Just make sure you're in when I get back, OK?' John said, hearing the unsteadiness in his own voice. Right at that moment, the only thing he needed was to see Stiles again, whole and unharmed.

After he hung up the phone, he turned to find Deputy Graham standing behind him, not trying to disguise the fact that she'd been listening in. 'That was Stiles?' she asked. 'He's OK?'

'Yeah, yeah, he's fine. Listen, do you mind if I...?'

'Go,' Graham said firmly. 'I can keep an eye on things here, just go and be with your son.' She paused for a moment. 'Listen, Sheriff, I know this is tough but you'll have to bring him in for questioning.'

'I know the drill,' John replied, a little sharply. 'I just want to make sure all his limbs are still attached before I stick him in an interrogation room.'

'Of course, Sheriff,' Graham said diplomatically. 'It's your call.'

John left the train depot, feeling light with relief but also sensing fresh trouble on the horizon.


	11. Chapter 11

Stiles was sitting on the couch when John got back, worrying at his thumbnail with his teeth. He'd obviously had a shower and changed his clothes since returning home, so there were no clues to be found in his appearance. He didn't have so much as a bruise to suggest any kind of ill treatment, and when John marched straight up to him and hugged him like he was afraid that Stiles was going to disappear, the kid didn't flinch or act like he was nursing any injuries.

Without asking him anything not related to his wellbeing, John packed Stiles into the police cruiser and took him straight to the station. He knew that if he delayed it there would be queries and whispers amongst his deputies, and he didn't trust himself not to consider letting Stiles off the hook altogether if he put it off for too long.

He made Stiles some hot chocolate to drink as he sat in an interrogation room, looking steadily ahead and giving a statement that probably sounded halfway plausible to anyone who wasn't intimately familiar with Stiles' lying face.

According to the words that Stiles put his messy, scribbled signature to at the end of the interrogation, he had come across the squat in the train depot already abandoned and had slept there for a couple of nights. He hadn't seen anyone else, and he had never even ventured inside the train carriage. He had left early that morning and wandered around Beacon Hills for a while before getting over his sulk and heading home.

John said very little beyond asking basic questions. He had a feeling that there was some kind of unspoken agreement between them - that he wouldn't press Stiles too hard for answers whilst the tape recorder was running, so long as Stiles opened up a little more later. Sure enough, Stiles actually seemed a little reluctant to leave the station, chatting with the desk sergeant and accepting a scolding from Deputy Graham for worrying his dad so much. Finally, John clapped a hand onto Stiles' shoulders like a prison guard and steered him out of the building.

They drove back to the house in silence, but as soon as they were home John laid a hand on Stiles' arm to prevent him from running straight up to his room and said, 'Alright. Now how about you tell me what really happened?'

Stiles paused and assembled his face into an approximation of surprise. 'I already told you everything!'

'Stiles, please...' John raised a hand as though Stiles' voice was physically assaulting him. 'I can handle you running off and not contacting me for two days. I can handle having to haul my own son in for questioning related to a possible _murder investigation_ in front of my co-workers. What I cannot handle is you lying to my face about one more thing so please... just don't. Don't do it.'

Stiles drew back into himself a little. After a moment of two of silence he walked away - not to his room, but to sit down at the kitchen table, arms folded placidly in front of him. John paused for a moment, and then sat down opposite his son.

He watched as Stiles licked his lips tentatively, flickered his gaze from side to side in the manner that he commonly did whilst thinking. Finally, with moisture shining slightly in his eyes, Stiles looked up again and said, 'I won't lie to you, Dad. Not again. There are things that I can't tell you, but I'll tell you what I can without lying to you.'

John was careful to keep his expression neutral. 'Alright,' he affirmed gently.

'You won't find a body,' Stiles said in a rush, almost immediately. 'Not because it's been hidden or eaten or whatever, but because no one died in that train car.'

'But the amount of blood...' John couldn't help but protest.

'Trust me, Dad,' Stiles said firmly. 'I lied. At the station, I lied. I was there when... I saw what happened in the train car. I saw everything.' His voice shook a little, but he took a deep breath and looked John in the eye. 'No one died,' he repeated.

John nodded. 'Can you tell me if it was an animal?' he asked.

Stiles hesitated. 'No.'

'No, it wasn't an animal?' John pressed.

'No, I can't tell you.'

John turned this over in his mind. 'Is there anything else you _can_ tell me?'

Stiles shrugged helplessly and sat back in his chair, running a hand over his head. 'This is...' He paused, and John sat poised, knowing by his son's body language that the most important clue was about to be revealed. 'This is kind of outside your jurisdiction, Dad!'

'What do you mean?' John demanded, forgetting to be patient for a moment. 'This isn't happening in Beacon Hills?'

'Not what I mean.'

'What _do_ you mean, then? Kid, I know... I know it can sometimes seem like criminals are out of reach of the law, but they're not. No one is.'

It was too late, though. Stiles was shaking his head at everything that John was saying, as though he was afraid that he had already said too much, and John knew that if he tried to turn the screws on his son he would end up losing the tentative truce that he had made. Instead, he carefully laid his roughened hand over Stiles' pale and smooth one and patted it gently.

'Alright,' he said at last. 'Thank you for being sort of honest with me.' He paused and then added, because he couldn't say it enough times, 'I'm glad you came home.' There was another pause before he finished up with, 'You're grounded.'

* * *

It started about a week later.

At the time, Stiles didn't think much of it. Isaac Lahey's father caused quite a stir when he came bursting into school at about lunchtime on a Monday, demanding to know where his son was. Stiles had seen Isaac in Chemistry earlier that day, but when the staff went looking for him he was suddenly nowhere to be found. He had guessed that Isaac had issues at home but had never really known him well enough to talk about it. Even if he had, well, it wasn't one of those things that guys really talked about much.

Isaac kept coming into school, and his dad came in a few more times looking for him, only to have Isaac disappear each time. Eventually Mr Lahey gave up trying to wrangle his son, in school at least, and Stiles would have forgotten all about it had Harris not deliberately split Scott and Stiles up in class and assigned Stiles to work with Isaac for the rest of the lesson.

Isaac grinned sidelong at him in that slightly sardonic manner of his and said, 'Don't worry, I can be your Scott for the day.' Stiles didn't know where he had smelled it - in Isaac's breath perhaps, or in his skin - but he realised quite suddenly that he was sharing his lab equipment with a werewolf.

Stiles had physically recoiled so obviously that Isaac actually looked a little embarrassed and mumbled something about not meaning to be creepy, curling his body in on itself in a habitually defensive manner that obviously hadn't been chased away by the bite. As Stiles had learned himself the hard way, the increased durability offered by the werewolf bite did nothing to alleviate emotional blows, and for a brief moment he considered apologising and promising to explain everything to Isaac. At the very least it might get him some answers.

He never did, though, and a few days later Erica Reyes walked into school in a short skirt and red lipstick and blew everyone's mind.

Erica hadn't really been on Stiles' radar much before, except in the kind of awful way that she would become apparent after she had noisy and public epileptic fits. He knew that people laughed at her, sometimes behind her back and sometimes straight to her face, and in a reprehensible way that had made Stiles deliberately _not_ notice her. He joked with Scott about how he was doing him a favour by being his friend and sacrificing his personal levels of cool, but in high school you just didn't go out of your way to be friends with people like Erica, in the same way that some of the other lacrosse team guys would actually give Stiles a slightly wider berth in the halls so as not to be unduly associated with the hyperactive bench-riding weirdo.

It wasn't that she wasn't pretty, just that Erica hid her prettiness in a scruffy mess of hair and baggy clothes. So when she walked into the cafeteria looking like a Suicide Girls pin-up and gave a sort of lazy half-smile like she knew that most of the guys (and a few of the girls) in the room were suddenly kind of feeling funny in the pants area, Stiles didn't even have to smell her to guess that it was the symptom of more than just a teen makeover.

His suspicions were confirmed later that day when, lurking shiftily by the front doors of the school, he saw Erica running gracefully down the steps towards the road, where Derek's Camaro was waiting and the man himself was leaning against the car, looking impossibly cool in his black leather jacket, carefully trimmed stubble and dark shades. He gave a rare, wide smile when Erica approached him, pushed a hand into her hair and captured her mouth in a kiss that - wow - yeah - was Derek aware that she was under 18?

Two new werewolves in town, and at least one of them had been turned by Derek. Stiles could guess at the reasons behind the sudden recruitment drive, but refused to confront Derek about it directly. He'd just about managed to find his own balance between his human life and his secondary nature, enough to keep the wolf satisfied and to keep his own temper in check. Besides, Stiles didn't care what was going on in the Beacon Hills territorial disputes - he wasn't part of that world.

So when Stiles passed by Vernon Boyd in the hallway the week after that and caught a whiff of that too-familiar stench of freshly-turned beta, he gritted his teeth and ignored it. He'd kind of liked Boyd, even if the feeling hadn't been mutual, but if Boyd was with Derek now then Stiles officially considered the kid to be out of his life.

He was doing fine. He was handling it. But then, after another week had gone by...

Jackson Whittemore.

Fucking _Jackson Whittemore_.

Stiles knew exactly when it happened as well. Jackson walked into lacrosse practice with the biggest shit-eating grin Stiles had ever seen. The first thing he did was shove a shocked Scott up against a locker with one hand, hold him there with ease and sneer at him, 'Better wear some extra padding, McCall. I'm feeling _lively_ today.'

That day, Jackson jumped a clear four feet in the air, treading on an opponent's back as he launched the ball into a net, whipping it past Danny's usually effective guard.

Scott stared disbelievingly up the field as Jackson did a victory lap, the _ass_ , and said slowly, 'You don't think...?'

'Werewolf?' Stiles finished bitterly. 'Yeah. I think.'

In all the lacrosse practices he'd had since becoming a werewolf, Stiles had never been more tempted to use his newfound strength to knock that self-satisfied smirk off Jackson's face. Most of the newly-bitten werewolf's undue aggression was directed at Scott, but whenever Jackson got the chance he would shove Stiles to one side or kick dirt in his face. Stiles considered breaking one of Jackson's bones so often during the practice that he probably ended up accounting for every bone in the idiot's body, but instead he just gritted his teeth and bore the punishment.

After school, though, Stiles took every inch of his bottled-up rage and stormed all the way to the Hale house, out in the woods. He couldn't see Derek, when he got there, but it didn't really matter. Stiles knew that he would be heard.

'Jackson Whittemore?' he yelled indignantly at the air around him. ' _Jackson Whittemore_? Erica, Isaac and Boyd I can deal with, but _Jackson_? Do you just hate me? Is this your way of punishing me?'

'Yes,' Derek said, finally stepping out of his front door. It had been mended with new wood where Stiles had broken it on his last trip out of the house. 'And no. In that order. I owed Jackson a favour, and this is what he asked for.' Derek shrugged dismissively.

'Oh, well if you owed Jackson a favour then I guess it makes total sense to give werewolf strength to a freakin' sociopath,' Stiles snapped, walking up to the Alpha and shoving him ineffectually in the chest. 'What are you doing, building up your own little army of child soldiers?'

'Who are you calling a child?' someone asked in bass tones from behind Stiles. His heart sank as he turned to see Boyd walking up to the house, flanked by Isaac and Erica. The latter was smirking and looking Stiles up and down, but Isaac was chewing his lip a little in concern.

'Derek, does he know about us?' Isaac asked levelly, looking Stiles in the eye.

So, apparently Derek had kept Stiles' secret. How touching. Seeing a weak point in the little triad, Stiles walked up to the mousey-haired werewolf slowly.

'Yeah, I know what you are, Isaac,' he confirmed in as gentle a tone as he could muster. 'And I know you don't owe Derek anything. The only thing you're going to get by following him around is trouble.'

'Maybe we want a bit of trouble,' Erica purred before Isaac could reply. She walked up to Stiles slowly and the next thing he knew there were dark claws digging into the front of his shirt, threatening to start scratching him. 'Maybe _you're_ the one who's in trouble, Stiles,' she suggested, her eyes flashing yellow. 'You're the one who walked into the big bad wolf's den.'

Stiles couldn't resist rolling his eyes. 'Oh please. You know that getting turned isn't an excuse to turn evil, right, Erica? This isn't _Buffy the Vampire Slayer_.'

Erica's mascara-heavy eyelashes fluttered a little in surprise as she retracted her claws and glanced over Stiles' shoulder at Derek, seeking some kind of reassurance. It was Boyd, however, who spoke next.

'Derek told us about the other werewolf, Stiles,' he said calmly. 'He told us about the risks too, of what it meant to be like him. We didn't care. We all chose this.'

Stiles couldn't help it; a sharp and bitter laugh escaped him as he heard that, and he turned to look at Derek. 'Yeah,' he said. 'Derek's all about full disclosure and total consent, aren't you, Derek?'

To his surprise, Derek actually looked a little mollified, casting his eyes downwards at Stiles' words. Before he could press the issue, however, the situation got suddenly and very dramatically worse.

'Woah, is it just me or did someone drop some total loser out here and forget to pick up after themselves?' Jackson drawled as he walked into the clearing, hands in his pockets and a cocky sneer plastered all over his stupid face. 'Stiles, kiddo, you don't know what you've walked into.'

His blood rising, Stiles stalked over to meet Jackson halfway. 'I heard there was a National Jackass Convention here today and, hey, looks like it's arrived.'

Jackson didn't laugh. 'You should walk away, Stilinski,' he breathed dangerously. 'You have no idea what I can do to you.'

'Can you come up with original threats? Are you planning to start any time soon?'

'Oh, I am going to take you apart,' Jackson said, baring his teeth.

'Sorry, Jackson, you're not really my type,' Stiles scoffed, turning away.

He actually heard facial bones grinding together as Jackson shifted, and was ready for it when a hand full of sharp-tipped claws came whipping at the side of his face. Stiles ducked with lightning-fast speed and was about to retaliate when Jackson suddenly went flying across the clearing, apparently of his own accord.

It was at that moment that Stiles realised that Derek was standing beside him, looking not at Stiles but at Jackson, with his eyes glowing red and his teeth drawn back over his frighteningly large fangs. Before Jackson could recover, Derek stormed over to him, pinned the younger werewolf down with one hand and _roared_ at him.

The sound was like nothing Stiles had ever heard before. It turned his insides to water and made him want to curl up on the ground and start whimpering. Out of the corner of his eye he could see Isaac, Erica and Boyd cringing and covering their ears and Jackson... Jackson wasn't taking it well. Fully human again, he was writhing under Derek's hand in an agony of terror, simultaneously trying to crawl away and to simply make himself disappear altogether.

After taking a moment to guiltily enjoy the sight of Jackson cringing and crying like a little baby, Stiles attempted a semblance of pity. 'Derek, let him go,' he instructed shakily. 'It doesn't matter.'

There was a long silence after Derek's roar died away completely. Derek looked at Jackson with a calculating expression, as though weighing the potential merits of ripping his beta's head off. Then he grunted dismissively and walked back over to Stiles, avoiding his direct gaze until right up until the last minute. When he finally looked up, there was a question in his eyes that Stiles, for some reason, had no difficulty reading.

 _Do you want them to know?_ Derek was asking, and somewhere under there was a low whine of, _Will you join them? Will you join me?_

Stiles paused for a moment to consider as Derek's hazel-flecked blue eyes watched him carefully, complex and kind of beautiful without the Alpha-red glow to them. It made sense, really; the wolf was a pretty simple creature with simple demands, but human Derek was multi-faceted and difficult to pin down.

If Stiles was honest with himself, trying to keep his werewolf side segregated was becoming exhausting, and he was starting to think that it might actually be impossible. And really, was it so bad being a werewolf? Alright, there were the parts where he'd wake up covered in a pile of deer guts or go crazy and nearly rip Derek to pieces or be terrified to go to sleep at night in case he lost control and killed his own father... Yeah, it was kind of bad. On the bright side, though, he would never again have trouble running for the bus.

Stiles chewed his lip. He was tempted, he was _so_ tempted, to give in now. To say yes to Derek. To have a pack - a family - other kids his age who could relate to his werewolf woes. Admittedly that so-called family would include Jackson and Stiles couldn't think of anything he less wanted to have a bond with, but Boyd and Isaac and Erica seemed alright, if a little messed-up in their own ways.

And yet... and yet... Stiles shook his head tightly. He saw the corners of Derek's mouth turn down in disappointment, and then the Alpha was gone, walking back up to the house.

'Stay away from here, Stiles,' Derek called without walking back. 'I'm going to be training the pack and I don't want you getting under our feet.'

'I'll try to resist the siren call of your sweet company,' Stiles shot back. He glanced over to one side as Jackson walked past him, towards the Hale house. The newly-made werewolf let his eyes glow murderously yellow as he glared at Stiles, but didn't make any other move towards him.

Stiles watched them all go with an odd twinge in his chest. It grew as he turned and walked away from the Hale house, feeling him with a tight ache and making it difficult to breathe. Then, when he was about half a mile away, he felt it snap. Suddenly there was nothing left but the trailing thread of where a connection had once been, something that Stiles had taken for granted. A nasty kind of coldness grew up around the ragged edges of it and a word came unbidden to Stiles' troubled mind.

 _Omega_.


	12. Chapter 12

John rubbed his fingertips over that spot in between his eyebrows that was always ground zero for headaches whenever he'd been concentrating too long. He considered pouring himself another finger of whisky, but he knew that he needed to keep a clear head. He had a laptop open in front of him, buried in nest of reports and files and photos like a mother hen laying eggs. If only the eggs contained something other than lifeless yolk...

It was possible that John had been awake for too long.

He'd dragged up not only the most recent evidence from the train carriage, but also all the old reports and papers from the killings that had gone before, dating right back to the Hale girl's death. He was surprised that the table wasn't cracking under the weight of it all, and as much as he tried to keep it all in order the piles of paper kept getting mixed up and sliding back into chaos.

What made matters worse was that the answer he was so desperately seeking was upstairs, sitting inside Stiles' head even as he laughed uproariously at the latest episode of whatever TV show he was watching. John had tried to get more information out of Stiles since he'd come home after his two-day sojourn, first with gentle persuasion and then, when that failed, with severe punishment. He'd tried grounding the kid, had even take away his phone and laptop for a while despite loud protests, but Stiles had remained tight-lipped and John had reluctantly withdrawn from the battle for the moment.

John had the three clues that Stiles had given him written in bold on a Post-It note that was stuck to his laptop.

_No one died._

_Animal??? Can't say._

_Outside of my jurisdiction._

John glared at the words as though he could bully them into making sense, but his son's hints were no more easily won over than Stiles himself. John gave up and sighed heavily, sifting through the evidence, half-hoping that the right answer would rise to the surface organically, but he only succeeded in starting a small avalanche that sent a few papers fluttering to the floor.

With another sigh, John leaned down to gather them up again. As he did so there was a noise like a small and very excited elephant as Stiles came bounding downstairs, apparently taking four steps at a time.

'Hey Dad,' he called cheerily on his way into the kitchen. John sat up again just as Stiles glanced at the table and paused, realising what his father was poring over.

John lifted his chin and stared Stiles hard in the eye. 'You know, if you'd help me out a little I could put this crap away and actually get some sleep,' he said reproachfully.

Stiles ducked away from his gaze and continued into the kitchen. 'Just came down to grab a Pop Tart, Dad,' he muttered defensively.

As Stiles clattered around in the cupboards, John looked back down at the papers he'd just grabbed. At the top of the pile was one of the small oddities that had irked him the most: Derek Hale's attempted mugshot, with the surly young man's face almost completely washed out by those odd glaring lights that seemed to be coming straight out of his eyes.

John hadn't looked at the photo in a while and just then, for the first time, he felt a stirring of inspiration - there was something familiar about it. Before he even fully remembered what it was that had struck him he was already reaching for his laptop, bringing up the password-protected folder with the relevant case data in it. In a sudden fury of focus he brought up the clip of security footage from the street camera that had helped them find Stiles.

Nothing, nothing, nothing... Then Stiles, walking down the street with his head ducked down, except for one short moment where he tossed his head back, as though in frustration.

John slammed his finger down so hard on the space bar that he actually heard Stiles pause for a moment in the middle of pressing buttons on the microwave and hold himself very still, listening, before carrying on.

John leaned back in the hard-backed wooden chair, rubbing his fingers over his mouth and trying to breathe as deep and as slowly as possible in order to calm his suddenly racing heart and the churn of nausea in his stomach.

As Stiles bustled around the kitchen, out of focus, the small, grainy, black-and-white image of Stiles on the computer screen looked up at John. His face was entirely obscured by two impossible lights, like lens flares or laser beams, that seemed to shine directly out of his eyes.

 _Oh God_ , John thought to himself. _What the hell am I dealing with here?_

It could just be an accident. It could just be a coincidence. What John needed, what he _really_ needed, was to establish a pattern.

Trying not to move too quickly, John slid his hand over to his phone and loaded up the camera. Resting his hand on the table in as casual a manner as he could pull off, he hovered his thumb over the screen and waited.

Stiles seemed to spend an unreasonably long time watching the microwave with his face angled away, or glancing in the wrong direction. He didn't look at John at all, as though he was deliberately avoiding meeting his eye. Finally, though, the microwave beeped and Stiles let out a small cheer of gratification, opening the door and taking out the plate with the Pop Tart on it. He grabbed a glass of milk that he'd poured for himself and finally turned around to begin heading back to his room.

Keeping the motion to an absolute minimum, John tapped the screen and took a photo.

He would have gotten away with it, he was sure. Stiles wouldn't have noticed at all, had John not neglected to set his phone to silent. Instead there was an obnoxiously loud and completely unmistakeable shutter sound effect as he took the photo and Stiles' head snapped up suddenly and horribly, like something out of a horror movie.

'What are you doing?' he snapped roughly, in a tone that John had never heard from his son before.

'Nothing,' he replied quickly, smiling in a manner that was meant to be friendly but probably came off as guilty. 'Can't I take a photo of my own son...?'

But Stiles didn't seem to have listened to the answer. He slammed his meal down on the table, spilling the milk as he did so, and bore down ferociously on John.

'What are you _doing?'_ he yelled again, his voice now high-pitched and outraged. His hand lashed out so fast that John barely saw it and suddenly his knuckles were stinging and the phone was gone, smashing into the wall, small shards of plastic flying away from it at the moment of collision and scattering around it as it bounced off onto the floor.

A stunned silence followed, in which John nursed his injured hand and Stiles backed off, his head turned away and one hand over his mouth as though he was about to throw up. John could hear his breaths, sharp and strained, and supposed that his own didn't sound much better.

Stiles seemed to recover first, straightening up again and slowly lifting his head to look at John, his eyes brimming with tears and with shame. 'Dad, I...'

'Go to your room,' John interrupted, his voice a dull monotone.

'Please, just let me...'

'Stiles, go to your room.' John still didn't yell, couldn't bring himself to raise his voice above that single, quiet command.

Stiles covered his mouth again and then turned and walked away slowly, as though worried his footsteps might do more damage. He glanced over his shoulder a few times as he ascended the stairs, but John refused to look at him.

Upstairs, Stiles closed his door. A small puddle of milk was creeping across the table, soaking into some of the paperwork. John stared straight ahead, waiting for his heart rate to calm down. Then he got up slowly and walked to the kitchen to run his hand under cold water, to help keep it from swelling or bruising too badly.

That done, he picked up his wrecked phone from where it had landed in the hall. He didn't bother trying to turn it on - the screen was ruined, anyway - but he found the right cable and managed to connect it up to his laptop. For a second he was afraid that nothing was going to happen, that the memory had been destroyed, but then the computer chimed brightly and the phone's folder popped up onto the screen.

Still feeling faintly sick, John clicked over to the photos and opened up the most recent one. It filled the screen a moment later and John laid a hand over his mouth and stared at it, shaking and feeling suddenly quite ill.

Stiles was looking directly at him in the photo, but John couldn't see his face. Those mysterious twin lights burned straight into the camera's single eye, eclipsing everything around them and leaving nothing behind but a blank white tinged faintly with yellow at the edges.

* * *

Derek really did need to find a normal apartment. Aside from being plagued by the definite sense that it was not normal to live in a place where his entire family had died, he would sooner or later have to accept that the burnt-out ruin was just not a viable place to live. There was no running water or electricity, and the den that he had set up for himself in the basement might feel comfortable to him, but he was seeing it in a whole new light now that Isaac was living there as well.

It wasn't that Derek couldn't afford to rent a place; he was comfortably well-off, as his clothes and car could testify. But renting meant paperwork and filling out lots of forms and photocopying his driver's license and doing all sorts of things that would make him incredibly easy to find. Derek's home was officially vacant on paper, and that was how he liked it.

He sighed as he sat down on the steps of his porch, exhausted after a day of training his new pack. Derek couldn't shake the niggling thought that it wouldn't have been this difficult to train Stiles. Of course it would have - it might even have been harder, given Stiles proclivity towards talking back and his generally obstinate personality - but Derek was haunted by the memory of the first night that they had hunted together, and how natural Stiles had seemed as he ran through the forest, occasionally butting his shoulder against Derek or yipping mischievously and trying to tackle the Alpha, before he caught the scent of the deer and had chased it down and killed it all by himself.

Derek shook the memory away angrily. It didn't matter. Stiles was gone and there were four new betas to replace him. It had seemed like a good idea as he was doing it - seeking out the weak and the damaged and the outcasts, those who would welcome the change, and giving each of them several days of personal attention before turning the next one. At the time it had felt like he had everything under control. Now it felt like Derek had walked into a pet shop and bought an armful of puppies on impulse.

Providing a sudden and swift visual aid for that metaphor, Erica came skipping out of the house and immediately landed in Derek's lap, straddling him and grinning against his mouth. 'I had a good time today,' she murmured, though Derek could hear her heart skip as she lied.

'I broke your arm,' he reminded her, sliding a hand around her waist to press his palm against her warm lower back.

'I broke your toe,' she retaliated, before taking his lower lip between her teeth and nibbling it gently.

Derek shifted a little on the steps and tried to keep a clear head. It had been a long time, a _really_ long time, since he'd gone... vertical with anyone - man or woman - and Erica was temptation on legs. Never mind the fact that, as one of his betas, her scent was automatically enticing to him, she'd also scrubbed up very well after getting the bite. _Very_ well.

Erica smiled and rolled her hips down against him and Derek drew his breath in sharply. He was barely out of his teens himself, and while he couldn't really describe himself as "only human" the werewolf in him didn't do much to help control his libido. Sort of the opposite, actually.

'I know Isaac's downstairs,' Erica murmured. 'But there are lots of perfectly good trees out here.'

Derek drew in a deep breath and stood up, tipping Erica out of his lap. 'No,' he said, his voice a lot cooler than he felt. 'You should go home before your parents start worrying. Get some sleep. It's the full moon tomorrow night and you need your rest.'

Erica blinked at him, looking a little annoyed. 'You can't just send me off to bed like some kid,' she shot back fiercely.

'First of all,' Derek said, taking a step closer to her and letting his eyes flicker red for a moment. 'I _can_ send you to bed if I want. You're my beta, and that means you do what you're told. Second of all, you _are_ a kid.'

Erica straightened her back angrily, which had an undeniably impressive effect. 'I'm seventeen!'

'And you've been a werewolf for less than a month. You're a kid as far as I'm concerned. Now...' Derek injected some of his Alpha influence into his voice. 'Go home.'

Erica glared at him, then turned on her heel and began running away from the house at full werewolf speed. Derek sighed and rubbed a hand over his face. That made two betas who had stormed off in a bad temper today. Jackson wasn't taking well to being ordered around. Derek was a little surprised that the jock hadn't pulled a Stiles and gone off to be independent, but he got the impression that Jackson wanted to benefit as much as possible from the free training before he made any rash decisions.

God, what a mess. What an awful mess. The werewolf that had left the corpse on the edge of Derek's territory hadn't made its presence known since then, but he knew that it would be watching. What if all it saw was a rookie Alpha with four betas that he had no real idea how to handle?

As if his thoughts had actually summoned the intruder, Derek suddenly looked up sharply as he heard a fallen branch breaking about half a mile away. A breeze rolled in and he caught the scent of something... something... something _not-pack_.

Derek's fangs extended without him even needing to think about it and he heard a low snarl rumble from deep inside his chest. Thinking of Isaac in the basement, a new beta who would probably still be torn apart by a born werewolf with years of experience, Derek began running quietly towards the source of the noise and the smell.

He could end it all now, and send out a warning to anyone else who felt like trying to intimidate him. He would tear this cocky little pissant apart and wear their teeth as a goddamn necklace, he would rip their throat open, he would tear them apart like they did to that poor human boy. Derek extended his claws, prepared to make the full shift as he ran faster and faster.

He was close. He was right on top of the mutt. Derek tensed his muscles and prepared to get violent.

'Holy shit!'

The intruder came into view from behind a tree and staggered back, nearly falling over in shock. Derek could actually feel his wolf starting to break loose as he realised in shock who he was about to kill and pulling it back into its shell was physically painful, like putting off an orgasm at the last second. He roared in frustration and slammed his claws into a nearby tree, sinking them in so deep that he actually felt the bark tear into his skin.

'God fucking _damn_ it, Stiles! I was about to kill you!'

Stiles looked terrified, which wasn't all that surprising considering he was a lone omega face-to-face with an extremely angry Alpha. Now that they were closer, Derek could see his eyes were red-rimmed and smell the distress pouring off him in waves. He was dressed in only a thin T-shirt and jeans, not really warm enough for this weather even with a werewolf's resilience, and he was out of breath.

'I...' For probably the first time in his entire life, Stiles seemed to be lost for words. 'I thought you'd recognise me.'

'Yeah, well, I didn't. You stink of outsider right now, and that sets off pretty much every alarm bell I have. Now what do you want?' Derek demanded.

But Stiles was backing away. 'This was a bad idea,' he stammered. 'I'll go, I...'

'What happened?' Derek asked bluntly. It had to be something, or Stiles wouldn't have come all the way out here.

Stiles hesitated. He was half turned away but he wasn't leaving. 'I didn't know where else to go,' he admitted in a pained rush. 'I... no one else knows. About me. I thought about telling Scott, thought about just coming clean, but I can't get it out of my head that if I start telling people it's all going to be _real_ and...'

'God, Stiles, just spit it out,' Derek snapped. 'What happened?'

Stiles paused for a moment in his monologue and looked up hesitantly. His eyes weren't werewolf-yellow, just their normal tint of warm golden-brown, and they were glistening with panicked tears. 'I hurt my Dad,' he whispered.

'Oh.' Derek considered this. 'Is he dead?'

'No! Jesus!' Stiles looked appalled. 'I hit his hand.'

Derek thought this over, and then shrugged, turning to walk away. 'That's alright. He has two hands.'

'It's not _alright_ , Derek!' Stiles yelled. 'Where are you going?'

Derek turned back to face him. 'What do you want me to do about it, Stiles?'

'I...' Stiles seemed taken aback. 'I just want some advice.'

It was a lie, Derek could tell. What Stiles really needed was a shoulder to cry on, and if he'd still been Derek's beta then it would have been impossible to remain this stoic in the face of Stiles' obvious, aching distress. But Stiles was an omega, so instead all Derek felt was a very human pang of empathy at seeing the poor kid so upset, mixed with the wolf's nausea at the cold and alien misery infecting his territory. Injecting steel into his voice, Derek said, 'You go to your Alpha for advice. Find yourself an Alpha.'

'But you're the only Alpha I know!'

'And you didn't want me.' Derek tried very hard not to let the words come out bitter, but he failed. 'You didn't want me, Stiles. So I guess now you don't have anyone.'

There was something darkly satisfying in seeing Stiles' lips part, ready to protest, his eyes flickering in confusion as the truth of Derek's cruel statement sank in. What Derek wasn't expecting, however, were Stiles next words.

'Can't I ask you as a friend?'

Derek frowned. 'A friend?'

'Yeah.' Stiles licked his lips nervously. 'We're friends, aren't we?' he pleaded.

A lifetime seemed to pass. Derek opened his mouth to say - what? Yes? No? What were they to one another, if not pack? Friends or enemies? Allies or foes? Or were they nothing at all?

Stiles apparently took his silence to mean the last of those options. He drew in a slow, pained breath of hopelessness and then ducked his head, so that all Derek could see of him was the short-cropped fuzz on his crown.

'Sorry,' Stiles muttered. 'This was stupid. I shouldn't have walked into your territory so close to the full moon. I'll figure this out, don't worry, I...'

There was a faint whistling noise and Stiles suddenly stopped speaking. He looked back up, his eyes unfocused and wandering, and he swayed a little on the spot.

'Stiles,' Derek said uncertainly.

'I...' was as far as Stiles got before crumpling gracelessly to the ground, landing on his side so that Derek could see the small dart protuding from Stiles' thigh and catch the stench of wolfsbane in the air.

For a brief moment Derek considered immediately retreating to the house. It would be the smart thing to do; he could warn Isaac, and the two of them could team up against whoever was hunting him. He even twitched in the direction of the house, but then his gaze was drawn back to Stiles and before he knew it he was crouching by the young werewolf's side.

'It's OK, Stiles,' he whispered, though Stiles' face was already slack with unconsciousness. 'I'll get you out of here, OK?'

He picked Stiles up and threw him over his shoulders in an easy fireman's lift. With his skin this close, Derek's sense of smell penetrated through the fog of wolfsbane and the bitter tang of omega and he picked up Stiles' true scent buried under them both. It reminded him of running with his first beta in the woods, and collapsing on top of him as the sun started to rise, the smell of pack filling his nose. His caution chased away, Derek began running back to the house.

Derek had gone only a few feet when he felt the sting of the first dart in his right thigh. He felt the area burn for a moment and then go numb, and he staggered for a moment before gritting his teeth and carrying on.

The second dart slammed into his lower back, near his spine, but still Derek didn't stop. Then the third hit him in the left calf and he went crashing to the ground, Stiles rolling off his shoulders and coming to rest a few feet away.

Derek tried to roar for Isaac, but the wolfsbane was draining his strength and dimming his eyesight and suddenly he found himself unable to talk above a whisper. He blinked blearily at Stiles' outstretched hand, lying in the leaves not so far away, and reached out to brush his fingertips over Stiles', to try and rouse him.

'St'ls,' he mumbled, feeling like he was speaking through cotton wool. 'St...'

A boot trod down heavily near him. A fourth dart stabbed into the back of his neck, and Derek was gone.


	13. Chapter 13

There was an uncomfortable strain in Stiles' neck when he woke up, and he groaned and weakly punched his pillow in an effort to bully it into a more ergonomic shape. Rather than meeting pillowy softness, however, his fist smacked down onto a cold, hard, gritty surface, sending a small rush of pins and needles up his arm.

It was at that point that a wave of nausea caught up with Stiles, worse than the most brutal hangover, and he moaned pitifully and rolled onto his back. There was a terrible taste in his mouth and something tacky clinging to his cheek that he very much wanted to go away. Stiles didn't even know where he was yet, but he was already absolutely certain that he needed a shower and some Tylenol.

He reluctantly opened his eyes. The ceiling overhead looked like dull, grey concrete and Stiles was lying on a floor that felt as though as it was made of the same thing. He clumsily swiped a hand over his left cheek to wipe away whatever was clinging to it, but when he lifted his shaking fingers in front of his own face he saw a completely gross and horribly familiar black substance smeared over them and felt his stomach churn, felt everything go hazy...

Stiles rolled up onto his hands and knees just in time and felt his entire body convulse as he retched and vomited black blood onto a puddle that was just starting to dry. His insides were cramping and bright lights were flashing in his vision. He lurched again and brought up what felt like another gallon or so of the stuff, and it burned his throat on the way up, left his eyes watering and stinging.

He stayed there for a few more moments, uncertain whether or not it was over. Finally he hiccupped and wiped his mouth with his already messy hand, toppled over backwards and scuttled in a sluggish crab style until his feverish back met a cool, dry wall.

 _Poison_ , Stiles thought to himself, closing his eyes to shut out the nasty bright lights and the depressing sight of metal bars ahead of him. _I've been poisoned_.

He remembered being in the woods and talking to Derek, then something punching him in the leg, then Derek... Derek...

Stiles could hear another heartbeat in the cell.

He allowed his head to roll over to one side and half-opened his eyes. There was a grubby, cracked porcelain toilet in the corner of the room and something was slumped over it, unmoving. Stiles blinked stubbornly and squinted until a mess of dark hair and a pale, still face came into view.

'D'rek,' he mumbled thickly, nearly throwing up again with the strength it took to speak. With a Herculean effort, Stiles heaved himself off the wall and began half-crawling, half-dragging himself over to the toilet. The concrete scraped at his skin and everything seemed at once too bright and too loud and too _much_.

After what seemed like an age, Stiles grabbed the toilet seat and dragged himself up far enough to lay his head on it, face-to-face with Derek. The Alpha was curled around the fixture, deeply unconscious but with a steady drool of black goo trailing from his mouth into the toilet bowl, which was already splattered with the substance. Derek wasn't usually particularly tanned, but just then he was as white as a sheet and unmoving, and had Stiles not been able to hear his heart beating he might have thought that Derek was already gone.

'Derek,' he called again, a little louder this time. When Derek still didn't move, Stiles lifted his hand up into the air and let it flop loosely down onto Derek's cheek in a weak slap. Still nothing. Stiles slid his hand around a little, managed to get a grip on Derek's damp, black hair and began rocking his head back and forth on the toilet seat. 'Derek. _Derek_.'

Finally Derek twitched, and then opened his mouth a little and let out a low, pained groan. A fresh wave of that sickly smell leaked from his mouth and hit Stiles directly in the face.

'Derek...' He paused for a moment, weighing up the situation. 'Oh God, Derek, move over!'

Stiles shoved Derek away from him to fall backwards against the wall, then hunched over the toilet and heaved, closing his eyes as more black blood splashed onto the mess already in there. It seemed to go on for a long time and when it was finally over Stiles felt ready to pass out. He also felt like he'd lost about twenty pounds overnight from the way his empty gut was aching.

Some time went by, during which Stiles was pretty sure that he passed out with his forehead resting on the toilet. When he opened his eyes again Derek was still slumped against the wall, but now there was a faint frown line deepening between his eyebrows. After pausing to make sure that he wasn't going to hurl again, Stiles shifted closer to Derek and pressed the backs of his fingers against the werewolf's forehead. It was worryingly cold and beaded with small drops of moisture.

'Derek,' Stiles whispered drowsily. 'Derek, you gotta wake up.'

A small sound escaped Derek's lips, but he didn't open his eyes. Exhausted, Stiles let his own head drop forward to land on Derek's shoulder, feeling where his shirt was soaked through with cool sweat.

'Don't die,' Stiles pleaded quietly. 'You can't die now. We need a plan, Derek.'

He wasn't sure how much time passed before Derek finally lifted his head, but when he did so Stiles was feeling a little better. Maybe a fraction of a percentage less crappy.

'Did you come up with a plan yet?' Derek asked, his voice a little shaky but otherwise even.

Stiles looked up with his eyes, because his head felt too heavy to move and Derek's shoulder was actually quite comfortable. 'Not yet. I was waiting for you.'

'Oh.' Derek opened his eyes at last, looking blearily at their surroundings. 'We should, uh... what did you call it?'

It took Stiles a moment to figure out what Derek was referencing. 'Brainstorm?'

'That's it. You go first.'

'OK, Plan A.' Stiles paused as a tremor went through his stomach, but it was a false alarm. 'Lie down on the floor and not think about throwing up. That is my plan. Your turn.'

Derek gave a weak huff of laughter. 'Sounds like a good plan. We're not going to be able to do much until the wolfsbane works its way out of our systems.'

'It's not gonna kill us, is it? Do we have to, like, set some on fire and snort the ashes?'

'If it was going to kill us we'd be dead already. It must have been diluted, or just a tiny dose in each dart. Come on, let's lie down.'

Stiles began working up the energy to move, but to his surprise it was Derek who shifted him, moving him carefully off the comfy shoulder and turning Stiles onto his back, cupping a hand under his head to soften the impact as he lay Stiles down. When that was done Derek took a few deep breaths to steady himself before heaving himself up onto his feet, walking unsteadily to the opposite side of the cell - as far away from Stiles as he could go without breaking through the bars - and lay down flat on his back.

Stiles rolled his head over to look at Derek uncertainly.

'Sorry,' the Alpha said, his eyes closed. 'You smell like omega and it's not... helping.'

Stiles tried to make light of it. 'Oh sure, you give _me_ the corner with the stinky toilet.'

Still not opening his eyes, Derek lifted one hand, pointed his little and index fingers in a rock 'n' roll gesture and said, 'Hierarchy, baby.'

Even though it hurt to do so, Stiles let out a quick punch of surprised laughter. 'Oh my God, I did _not_ just hear you say that.'

'I'm kind of loopy from the wolfsbane. Enjoy it while it lasts.'

'I definitely... definitely will,' Stiles murmured, right before passing out again.

* * *

Scott had been planning to sleep in. It was the weekend and he was feeling scratchy and irritable because of the full moon's current proximity and the knowledge that he would spend the next night struggling to fight off the urge to grow fangs and start getting hairy. He also had a date with Allison during the daytime (a secret one, of course) that he needed to be fresh for.

All of these were reasons why he was none too pleased to be woken by the sound of someone hammering on his door at 9am. He groaned and slammed a pillow over his head, hoping that they would just go away, but the knocking didn't give up and eventually he rolled out of bed and stomped downstairs moodily.

Scott opened the door to find four teen werewolves standing on his doorsteps. He'd had suspicions about a couple of them, but the full moon waiting over the horizon meant that he had a crazily good sense of smell and any doubts he might have had about the new betas were quickly cast aside. He glared at them all - Isaac biting his lip, Boyd staring with his chin lifted and his arms folded, Erica looking a little tearful and Jackson looking how Scott felt - and said, 'Little early for a house call.'

'Derek's missing,' Erica blurted out. 'Have you seen him?'

'What?' Scott was nowhere near awake enough to deal with this latest crisis. 'No. Why would I have seen him.'

'Because you're the only other werewolf we know about,' Boyd retorted heavily.

'Apart from Stiles, and we think he's missing too,' Isaac added.

'Wait, what?' Jackson demanded, and the other werewolves echoed the sentiment, all turning around to stare at Isaac while Scott struggled to catch up and wished he had some coffee.

'Didn't you guys smell him yesterday?' Isaac asked, sounding surprised. 'Didn't you see how fast he moved? He's like us.'

'Stiles is _not_ a werewolf,' Scott argued, rubbing at his temple with the heel of his hand.

'Uh, yeah he is,' Isaac retorted placidly.

'You think I wouldn't notice if my best friend was a werewolf?'

Isaac shrugged. 'Apparently not.'

'That little nimrod is not a werewolf,' Jackson snapped, clenching his jaw a little.

Perhaps it was just part of his natural inclination to disagree with whatever Jackson said, but suddenly Scott found his tired brain reconsidering what Isaac had claimed. The guy did seem pretty confident about it, and Scott couldn't exactly deny that Stiles had been acting distant and weird for weeks now. He'd taken to wearing _way_ too much aftershave for one thing, and if he really was missing then it wouldn't be the first time. Scott still remembered that awful moment when he'd gone with the Sheriff to the old train depot and found all those blood and claw marks.

He'd asked Stiles about it, demanded to know what had happened, but Scott's friend had stubbornly insisted that he knew nothing about the blood and that he'd only run away for a couple of days because of an argument with his dad. That had been exactly a month ago, though...

During the full moon.

'Oh my God,' Scott said slowly, marvelling at how he hadn't managed to piece it all together until now. 'Stiles is a werewolf.'

Isaac raised his hands in an "I told you so" gesture while Jackson swore bitterly and kicked the side of Scott's house.

'How did this happen?' Scott demanded, looking at each of them in turn frantically. ' _When_ did it happen? Why didn't he just tell me? I'm, like, the one person in the world that he could have told!'

'Derek knew,' Erica said softly. 'Stiles came up to the house yesterday and he knew all about us and Derek... he and Derek were acting weird around each other.' Her eyes suddenly flashed yellow in fury. 'What if Stiles did something to Derek?'

That quickly snapped Scott back from the revelation that his best friend was werewolf to the rather more urgent matter of his best friend being _missing_. 'So wait, they're both gone?'

'When we couldn't find Derek we went to Stiles' house. No one was home, and his bed hadn't been slept in,' Boyd explained.

Trying to get the image of Boyd sniffing Stiles' sheets out of his head, Scott ran his fingers through his hair, thinking hard. Finally he said, 'We should talk to the Sheriff. Try to find out if he knows where Stiles is.' When the other werewolves merely looked at each other hesitantly in response to this suggestion, Scott let his shoulders drop down in exhaustion. 'What? What else aren't you telling me?'

Boyd sighed. 'We went to the station. Hung around outside and tried to listen in for some more information.'

'And? What did you hear?'

Boyd looked Scott wearily in the eye. 'The Sheriff's missing too.'

* * *

**_12 hours earlier_ **

'Nothing?' John asked again, knowing that the answer would be the same, but desperate for any kind of clue.

' _I'm sorry, Sheriff. If it was just the aggression and mood swings then we'd have a laundry list of drugs to pick from, but this thing with the eyes_...'

'Glowing, yes. Only in photos, though. What could cause that?'

' _Nothing that we currently know about, and we deal with a lot of mugshots of drug addicts. It could be a new drug that we don't know about, but if that's the case then it sounds like Beacon Hills might be ground zero_.'

John rubbed at his forehead wearily with the hand that wasn't currently a nasty shade of red and purple. 'What about some new strain of rabies? The animals around here have been acting awfully strange lately, and we've had a lot of attacks on humans.'

' _Could be, Sheriff, but the DEA doesn't really specialise in that sort of thing. You'd have to get in touch with Animal Control_.'

'Yeah. Yeah, they're my next port of call. Thanks anyway.'

' _We'll make a note of the symptoms in case we find anything that matches. Good luck, Sheriff_.'

John hung up the phone and sighed heavily. He hadn't mentioned any specific names during the call, and was trying not to think about the possibility that Stiles could be on drugs, but it was the best explanation that he could think of. Derek Hale definitely fit the profile of a dealer and if the drug was something new, something that hadn't yet been made illegal, then that could explain why Stiles had said it was outside of his jurisdiction.

John was at the station. He hadn't wanted to make these calls with Stiles in the house, and in all honesty he wasn't ready to face his son again just yet. They'd argued before and John would occasionally have to haul Stiles around a little, but he'd never hit his son and Stiles had never raised a hand to him. Now John had what felt like a fracture in one of the bones of his hand, certainly something that he'd need to get checked out by a doctor tomorrow, and he felt as though the fragile family life he'd pieced together after losing Claudia was slipping away from him.

A knock at his office door startled him out of his fugue and he cleared his throat before saying, 'Come in.'

Gail, the officer who was working the front desk that night, opened his door with a sightly tense expression. Before she could open her mouth, Cathy and Jeremy Marcus came bustling in, still wearing their terrible raincoats and looking eager to talk.

'Sheriff! So glad we caught you while you were in!' Cathy said enthusiastically.

John frowned and checked his watch. 'Little late, isn't it? If you want your camera back...'

Before he could finish, Jeremy Marcus waved a hand dismissively. 'Oh, shucks to the camera. We've found something a lot bigger than a bunch of animal tracks and claw marks now. A _lot_ bigger.' Before going on, however, he looked sidelong at Gail with undisguised resentment at her continued presence.

Realising that he was unlikely to get any more information unless he played along a little, John smiled sympathetically at Gail, who was starting to look decidedly annoyed, and said, 'You can get back to the front desk. I can play host to Mr and Mrs Marcus.'

She nodded at him in a way that silently implied she would be back again in a second if he wanted the pair escorted out, before leaving the room and closing the door quietly behind her.

John leaned back in his chair. 'Alright, what is it you think you've found?' he asked in his best sceptical voice.

Jeremy Marcus hung back, but Cathy sat down eagerly in the chair opposite John, leaned forward and whispered confidentially, 'What do you know about _wolves_ , Sheriff?'

John raised his eyebrows. 'Not much,' he replied, though it wasn't entirely true. He'd had cause to do some research recently. 'There aren't any wolves in California.'

'Correction,' Cathy Marcus said in an irritatingly self-satisfied way. 'There _weren't_ any wolves in California. That's changed a little recently.'

John smiled indulgently. 'You're telling me there are wolves in Beacon Hills? That it was wolves who killed the Chaplin boy?'

Cathy laughed. 'Oh no.' She beckoned with one finger and after a moment John reluctantly leaned a little closer to her.

'No?'

'No,' she repeated. 'It was us who killed the Chaplin boy.'

As the shock of those words hit John, he felt a sudden sharp stab in the side of his neck and immediately tried to thrash, but a strong hand clamped down over his mouth and held his head still. John cursed inwardly, feeling a terrible wave of dizziness come over him, and realised that he'd forgotten to keep an eye on Jeremy Marcus.

He struggled one last time, and then everything went dark.


	14. Chapter 14

'I feel marginally less awful. _Marginally_.'

'You look fine.'

' _Marginally_ , I said.'

Stiles was sitting with his back to the wall, picking dried flakes of blood off his face, watching as Derek fruitlessly pulled, hammered and charged the bars of the cell they were in. There were no windows and Stiles strongly suspected, based on the fact that he wasn't picking up any aural clues as to their location, that the prison was soundproofed.

Derek staggered back, breathing a little hard. 'I think these bars are titanium.' He looked down at his hands, which were reddened and a little blistered. 'They're also coated with something, feels like some kind of varnish made from wolfsbane.

There followed a silence that was rudely interrupted by Stiles' stomach growling noisily. He groaned and rubbed it in a vain attempt to soothe his hunger. 'Man, I am running on fumes. What are they gonna do, starve us to death?'

'They're not going to give us food and water,' Derek replied, pacing restlessly. They want us weak, so they can control us.'

'Who's "they"?' Stiles demanded, annoyed at the thought of Derek holding out on him.

'Hunters,' Derek answered simply. 'Has to be.'

'But I haven't killed anyone!' Stiles protested. 'And you've only ever killed another werewolf, which probably doesn't count. They can't do anything to us if we're innocent, right?'

Derek shrugged. 'Maybe they're like Kate.' He said the name with a thick, almost frightening bitterness. 'Maybe they don't care about the Code.'

'Well that's just great,' Stiles complained, dropping his head into his hands. 'We're going to die of hunger and you have to spend your last few hours with a smelly omega. This is just peachy.'

There was silence for a moment, and then the direction of Derek's pacing changed. Stiles looked up just in time to see the dark-haired man drop down onto the floor next to him and lean back against the wall so that their shoulders were brushing.

'You don't smell that bad,' Derek said in a faux-confidential tone.

'Oh gee, thanks.' Stiles rolled his eyes. 'I was just waiting for a tall, dark stranger to sweep me off my feet and tell me that I don't smell completely repulsive.'

'I mean it. It's not bad, it's just weird. I recognise your scent from when you were my beta, and it's... disconcerting to have it mixed up with omega now.' He stretched his legs out a little, scuffing his shoes in the dirt and looking a little forlorn. Stiles stared at him sidelong, noticing with a twinge of annoyance that Derek actually looked even more hopelessly attractive when he was all grimy than he did when he was cleaned up. Did the guy ever stop being photogenic? Stiles was almost certain that he, personally, wasn't pulling off the crawled-out-of-a-swamp look nearly as well.

'If we get out of here,' Stiles said, his brain only half-functional. 'I think I want to be your beta again.'

Derek didn't look at him, but Stiles felt him tense up a little. 'Yeah?'

'Yeah. I mean, I thought just being an omega would keep me out of trouble.' Stiles didn't inish the thought, but he looked dead ahead at the bars of their prison and heard Derek give a weak huff of laughter.

After it died away, Derek was quiet for a moment. Then he said, 'I've been trying to think of a way to apologise without actually feeling regret. Do you think it's possible?'

Stiles looked over at Derek's profile and blinked stupidly. 'Apologise to who?'

'To you. For giving you the bite. Turning you.'

'Are you sorry that you did it?'

Derek finally turned to look at him and frowned. 'No,' he admitted. 'I think you were born to be a werewolf. I can't stop being happy that you're one of us.' He waved a hand vaguely at their surroundings. 'Even now.'

'Wow. Dude, you're kind of a dick.'

'I know.' Derek sighed. 'I am sorry that you didn't get a choice, if that's worth anything.'

'I'll take it,' Stiles said imperiously, after a moment of consideration. 'If that's the best I'm going to get. Maybe one day you can let me bite you back, just so we're square.'

He heard Derek grin rather than saw it. 'You can try.'

They sat for a moment in the kind of strained, peaceable silence of two people who are truly stuck in a terrible situation. Stiles stared straight ahead at the bars and chewed his lower lip, wondering, wondering...

'If we both attacked the bars at the same time, do you think we could get out of here?' he asked Derek hopefully.

The Alpha hesitated before answering. 'It's going to hurt to try. The wolfsbane...'

'Don't worry, I have a genius plan.' Stiles shrugged off the warm, button-down flannel shirt that he'd been wearing over his T-shirt, extended his fangs just a little and tore into it. Once it was successfully maimed, he tore off a long strip and began wrapping it around the palms of his hands, hooking it round his thumb and creating a thin layer all the way up to the beds of his fingers. As he started on the other hand, he tossed the shirt into Derek's lap as an indication that he should do the same.

They wrapped what was left of the shirt around one of the bars to protect their fingers (the plan was to bend it in an awesome stage magician way - at least, that's how Stiles was thinking about it) but then faced some awkwardness when they couldn't both get a grip on the bar without getting in each other's way. They finally got into a position where Stiles was crouched down a little holding one part of the bar and Derek was reaching over him to secure a steady grip a little higher up. They both planted one foot against the bar next to it, to give them some leverage.

'On three, ready?' Derek said tightly. 'One... two...'

'Stop!' Stiles hissed suddenly, freezing. It was unnecessary, for he'd felt Derek tense up a split second before he himself had at the sound, not too far away, of scraping metal. Stiles felt Derek's hand on his arm and allowed himself to be drawn into the back corner of the cell as they heard the heavily muffled sound of voices and scuffing footsteps.

Suddenly Stiles realised that his view was being blocked by Derek's back. The Alpha had planted himself firmly on front of the omega as though trying to hide him from sight, and Stiles felt both indignant and touched at the idea that Derek was deliberately putting himself between Stiles and the potential danger.

The outer door to their prison opened, letting in a temporary rush of sound from the outside world that nearly deafened Stiles after the long periods of muffled silence. Then two people entered the room, one dragging the other, and as Stiles saw who it was he suddenly felt like throwing up again.

* * *

'Could be the last chance you get...'

'This is not happening. This is _not_ happening.'

'...To tell him on your own terms.'

'We can get out of here, we can have another go at the bars.'

'We've already, tried. We're not strong enough, Stiles. You need to deal with this.'

 _Stiles_.

The last thing that John felt like doing was opening his eyes. In fact, he would have been glad to fall unconscious again with the way his head was pounding and bright lights were flashing behind his eyes. But Stiles... Stiles was here.

He groaned and the two arguing voices faded into a breathless silence. John rolled his head on the pillow underneath and fluttered his eyes open, wincing at the harsh light that poured in when he did so. The ceiling overhead was grey, rough concrete and there was a rank smell hanging in the air.

Rolling his head to one side, two figures slowly came into focus, both of them watching him with trepidation. On the left, standing and leaning back against the bars with his arms folded defensively over his chest, was Derek Hale. He was shirtless and very clearly had no reason to be self-conscious about the fact, but he looked pale and tired, a layer of black stubble grown in over the lower half of his face.

Stiles was sitting cross-legged, wringing his fingers worriedly in his lap. He also looked terrible, flakes of some black substance on his chin and throat and dark hollows under his eyes. He was stripped down to his boxers but didn't seem to be cold, despite the damp chill in the air. When John looked at him he started suddenly before getting up on his knees and crawling forward a little.

'Are you OK? Did they hit you? We couldn't find any marks on your head but...'

'They didn't hit me,' John interrupted groggily, sitting up gingerly and pausing to move his stiff jaw from side to side. 'Stuck me with some kind of knock-out juice.' He looked up at Derek with as severe an expression as he could muster. 'What are you doing here, and why is my son here?' He paused to take in their respective states of undress. 'And what happened to your clothes?'

Hale cleared his throat pointedly and nodded his head to indicate something on the floor. John looked down and realised that his "pillow" was actually made out of a pile of clothes, including the tattered remains of one of Stiles' flannel shirts. After debating whether or not to just lie back down, John took the clothes that he recognised and passed them to Stiles, then threw a grubby white shirt in Hale's direction.

John watched them dress, casting his eyes over Stiles for any signs of obvious injury and finding none. When they were decent again he said, 'I asked you both a question and you haven't answered it yet.' He looked directly at Stiles. 'Did they hurt you?' he pressed gently. 'The Marcuses?'

'Who?' Hale demanded, straightening up with sudden alertness.

Stiles simply looked confused. 'We didn't see them when they got us, but some dorky-looking dude dragged you in here. We tried to get out, but he had a gun.'

For some reason, Hale moved a hand up to cover his left bicep. John glanced at him as he moved and thought he saw a small, fading mark on the man's skin before it was covered up.

'Is it more than just one guy?' Stiles asked worriedly.

'There are two of them,' John replied tersely, looking directly at his son's face for any signs of deceit. 'You don't know them?'

'No!' Stiles said, his eyes wide.

'You don't know why they would want to kidnap you?'

'No,' Stiles said again, but his voice wavered and he didn't look John directly in the eye.

There was a loud and obnoxious sigh from across the cell as Hale moved away from the bars, his eyes turned skyward. 'Hunters,' he said bitterly.

'I don't know about hunters, but they're definitely murderers,' John revealed, watching the young man pace the cell restlessly. 'They killed the Chaplin boy.'

' _They_ did?' Stiles said in surprise. He glanced up at Hale and the two of them exchanged a meaningful but frustratingly indecipherable look.

'Stiles,' he said heavily. 'Is there something you want to tell me?'

Hale turned his intense gaze to John, clenching his jaw as though he was barely holding back from speaking, but Stiles looked away and dropped his head miserably into his hand. 'No,' he mumbled with heart-breaking honesty. 'There really isn't a single thing that I want to tell you.'

'You don't have a choice, Stiles,' Hale said, with surprising gentleness.

'Shut up,' Stiles said viciously, lifting his head to glare at Hale.

'Is this something to do with drugs?' John asked sharply.

Both of his cellmates turned to look at him with twin expressions of surprise on his face. Stiles - with his pale face, shadowed eyes and slight hollowness to his face, and the way he appeared to be slightly strung out - currently looked like he belonged on a poster warning youths away from narcotics, and John steeled himself to hear his son admit to the thing that he'd been most afraid of.

Before Stiles could answer, though, the stillness in the air was interrupted by a low chuckle from over by the bars. John looked up and saw Hale laughing to himself with a kind of desperate amusement, rubbing a hand over the back of his head. A sudden jolt of fury stabbed through John and he stood up, stalking a little unsteadily over to the younger man.

Hale lifted his chin in a sort of challenge as John moved into his personal space, but he couldn't do much about the fact that John was slightly taller than him in shoes.

'Something funny, Hale?' John growled. 'Because the idea of you selling my son drugs doesn't strike me as all that amusing.'

'Dad, don't,' Stiles said urgently, and John heard a scuffing as the kid got to his feet.

Hale bared a mouthful of very white teeth. 'The idea of Stiles doing drugs? Yeah, it's pretty funny to me. He's a straight A student who doesn't exactly get invited to a lot of parties. Don't tell me you've seriously been picturing Stiles hanging out on street corners with hardened criminals.'

'Hey, I get invited to parties!' Stiles protested irritably. 'And I'm flunking Geography.'

'You...' John stabbed his finger close to Hale's face but then turned around distractedly. 'You're flunking Geography?'

Stiles suddenly looked like a deer in headlights. 'I got a B minus on my last paper,' he admitted, glaring at Hale rebelliously.

John nodded slowly, then took a few steps backwards and turning around to face his son. 'So what is it, Stiles?' he asked despairingly, throwing his arms to his sides in defeat. 'You gotta tell me, kid, because I'm fresh out of possible explanations for all the weird stuff that's been going on around here, and why you seem to know so much about it.'

Stiles stared back at him helplessly, opened his mouth for a few seconds, then closed it again and swallowed hard, his eyes shining a little with moisture as he looked over John's shoulder.

'You want me to tell him?' Hale asked.

'No!' Stiles blurted out angrily.

'Tell me _what?'_ John yelled furiously. He was standing halfway between Derek and Stiles, looking at each of them in turn and finding no answers anywhere. He _hated_ this: being caught in a situation where everyone except him knew what was going on.

The long silence that followed was interrupted by the sudden bang and clank of the heavy metal door to the room opening. All three of the prisoners turned to face the bars, Stiles looking slightly relieved as he did so. John gritted his teeth as Jeremy and Cathy Marcus entered the room, Jeremy carrying what looked like a camera case and a tripod.

'Don't let us interrupt you, boys,' Cathy cooed soothingly as Jeremy set the equipment down on the ground and began setting it up. 'We just need to get everything ready.' As an afterthought she pulled a gun that looked very familiar out of the pocket of her anorak. John gritted his teeth as he saw his firearm being handled by an obvious amateur.

He approached the bars fearlessly. 'I don't know why you've brought us here,' he said. 'But I can promise you that if you let us go now the consequences will be a lot less severe than if you keep us here and wait to get caught. And you _will_ get caught.'

Cathy gave an irritating trill of a laugh. 'We've hidden from the government before, Sheriff. It's not as difficult as they'd like to think. And I'm afraid what we're about to do now is far too important to cut short.'

John glanced over at where Jeremy Marcus was extending the legs of the tripod. 'What is that?' he asked in a steady voice. 'A snuff film?'

'In a way,' Cathy responded with an eager smile. 'Possibly the most important snuff film ever made. And we're going to be the ones who show it to the world.'

John was about to respond, but it was Hale who spoke first. 'You think you're the first people to have tried this?' he asked mockingly. 'There are people - very powerful people - with an interest in keeping our secret. You'll be dead before any kind of video makes it onto the internet.'

'That was a confession!' Cathy exclaimed eagerly, turning to her husband, who was fumbling to get the camera on top of the tripod. 'Did you get that?'

Jeremy frowned and mumbled something about the battery, reaching down to rummage through the bag. 'Are we sure this is even going to work?' he asked quietly. 'What if the effects of the moon are muted down here?'

Cathy seemed to consider this, chewing her lip. 'Good point. We might need something to trigger it.' She looked up with a sudden beatific smile. 'I know, let's spill a little blood!'

What happened next seem to occur in a kind of staggered slow motion. Later, John would remember taking a few steps backwards as Cathy Marcus raised the gun, and he remembered grabbing Stiles' arm in an effort to drag his son back and behind him. But Stiles was immovable, seemed not even to feel the grip. John felt the muscles in his son's upper arm bunch up suddenly and violently.

Stiles' face contorted in anger, but it changed far more than should have been possible. A soft yellow light spilled onto his cheeks and into the hollows of his eye sockets and a chill went through John as he saw his son's irises burn a bright gold colour.

Then Stiles roared - there was no other word for it - and there were fangs in his mouth, actual _fangs_. They gleamed, impossible and white and sharp, under the fluorescent lights.

John was vaguely aware of bringing a hand up to cover his mouth as he searched Stiles' face for any trace of the boy he had raised for over sixteen years, raised alone for half of them, but it was as though Stiles had been replaced by something else - something dark and dangerous and terrifying.

Cathy Marcus recoiled in a mixture of awe and fright. Then, without hesitation, she raised the gun and John found himself staring down its barrel.

Another ear-splitting howl filled the room and suddenly John's view of the gun was blocked by Stiles back as he leapt forward, as though he was about to tear through the bars to get to Cathy.

The sound of the shot ricocheted around the room, and John saw the bullet burst out of Stiles' back in a spray of blood and torn flesh. It whistled harmlessly past John's left side but he ignored it as he moved forward, his heart pounding and a cry of desperate denial echoing around his head, and caught Stiles as he stumbled backwards. The fangs drew back again, reforming as normal, blunt human teeth, and the glow faded from his eyes as John lowered him gently to the ground, cradling Stiles' head against his chest and holding him up as best he could.

Stiles dipped his fingers into the spreading pool of blood on the front of his shirt, staring at it as though he couldn't believe what had happened. Then he looked up with wide, fearful eyes and whispered, 'Guess it's all out now.'


	15. Chapter 15

The Marcuses had left. A red light was shining on the front of the camera as it pointed mercilessly into their cell.

Stiles' eyes were closed and he was breathing gently as John let his son's head rest on his lap, one hand settled in the close-cropped hair with a thumb brushing over his temple. There were tears drying on John's cheeks, but he didn't bother to wipe them away.

Derek Hale was sitting nearby, his back against the wall, watching them quietly. At last he said, 'He's not going to die. He'll be fine again in another half hour or so.'

John finally looked up, not bothering to disguise his helpless rage, and silently begged Derek for more information.

'He's a werewolf,' Derek continued, looking down at Stiles with an inscrutable expression.

John laughed. He couldn't help himself. He covered his mouth with one hand to stifle the sound, so that he wouldn't disturb Stiles, but kept the other hand clamped firmly onto the bullet wound in his son's chest. He had a sudden, very certain feeling that the entire world had simultaneously gone mad and started making absolute sense.

Eventually John managed to get himself under control. He wiped a hand over his face and turned to look at Derek. 'How long?' he asked, his voice a little hoarse. 'How long has he been a werewolf?'

'A couple of months,' Derek replied evenly.

A couple of months. Of course. John's only son had been a werewolf for a couple of _months_ and he hadn't been able to figure it out. 'How did it happen?' he asked, still working to keep his voice calm.

Derek didn't reply at first. He was looking down at Stiles again, but now John got the distinct impression that it was only in the interests of avoiding eye contact.

'Derek,' he said, his voice hard now. 'How did he become a werewolf?'

'I...' Derek took a deep, shuddering breath and looked up as though it was the last thing in the world that he wanted to do. 'He was bitten,' he replied ambiguously. 'By an Alpha werewolf.'

'OK,' John said slowly, looking Derek dead in the eyes. 'Who was the... the _Alpha werewolf_ that bit him?'

'Dad, forget it,' Stiles groaned, opening his eyes and looking up wearily at his father.

'You're awake,' John exclaimed in undisguised relief.

'Uh, yeah.' Stiles looked a little sheepish. 'To be honest, I was never really asleep. Just, uh, avoiding a serious conversation.'

John took a deep breath and let it out again. 'Yeah, I'd say this is definitely the strangest conversation I've ever had.' He looked up at Derek again and stated steadily, 'It was Derek, wasn't it? He's the werewolf that bit you.'

The way that Hale winced and averted his gaze was enough to tell John that, for once, his guess was spot-on.

'Stiles,' he continued, speaking as evenly as he could manage. 'I just need to move you for a second, son.'

Stiles grimaced. 'Please, can we put a hold on the violence? I'm pretty sure I'm gonna throw up if I see any more blood. You can beat him up later, Dad.'

'Thanks, Stiles,' Derek deadpanned, but John saw a slight smile curling at the edges of the young man's mouth.

'No problem. I might even join in. We could sure do with a father-son bonding exercise.'

John laughed, but it came out strangely, with a hint of a sob in it. Every time he closed his eyes he saw the bullet punch out through Stiles' back, felt the fine spray of blood as it happened, felt the split-second of certainty that the most important thing in the world was about to be ripped away from him.

Stiles must have felt John's fingers tighten a little on his chest, because he brought one weak hand up and laid it reassuringly over his father's. 'Really, Dad,' he said. 'Derek's right, this isn't enough to kill me. Hell, if we get out of here then you're probably going to be stuck with me for a pretty long time. The way I am now, I could get hit by a truck and just walk it off.'

'The way you are now being... a werewolf.'

'That's the spirit.' Stiles grinned a little sadly. 'Just keep saying it out loud and eventually it'll start to sound normal.'

John took a deep breath, and then let it out again, shaking his head. He didn't think that it would ever start to sound normal. 'What does it mean?' he asked cautiously. 'I... I know what I saw, what happened to your eyes and your teeth, but do you have control of it? Is all that stuff about the full moon true?'

'It...' Stiles began, before suddenly going quiet and looking over at Derek with wide, horrified eyes. 'Oh my God. What time is it?'

'We've probably got another half an hour,' Derek said quietly. 'Enough time for you to heal up.'

Suddenly Stiles was twisting, trying desperately to sit up. John kept a tight hold on him, grabbing his shoulder in an effort to keep him still. Even with a bullet wound in his chest, Stiles was impossibly, frighteningly strong.

'No,' Stiles whimpered. 'No, this isn't happening, no, oh crap...'

'What's going on?' John demanded, looking at Derek in desperation.

'The full moon is tonight,' Derek intoned forebodingly. 'Stiles is still young, and newly-bitten. He's probably going to transform.' He nodded at the camera. 'That's why they set this up, why they kidnapped you. They want to capture the transformation, and they want to show me and Stiles killing you, and to have a body to prove it wasn't fake.'

John felt a shiver go through him at those words, but he didn't let go of Stiles. 'Is that going to happen?' he asked in as calm a voice as he could muster. 'Are you going to kill me?'

'I won't.' Derek chewed his lip as he looked down at Stiles. 'I learned to control the transformation years ago, but Stiles... I don't know. I'll do my best to keep him away from you if he turns.'

'You'll do whatever it takes,' Stiles corrected, layering the words with meaning as he looked up at Derek.

'What the hell is that supposed to mean?' John said angrily. 'You'd better not be saying what I think you're saying, young man.'

'Dad, I'd rather die...'

'Stop talking right now.'

'...Than have to live with myself if I hurt you,' Stiles finished fiercely.

'That's enough,' John said, resisting the urge to shake him. 'We're going to get through tonight and it's going to be fine, and then we're going to find a way out of here.' He breathed heavily for a few moments, staring at the drying blood on his hands. 'How are you holding up?' he asked, a little more gently.

'It hurts,' Stiles admitted after a pause. 'But it's not going to be enough, Dad. Derek, it's not...'

'I know,' Derek interrupted. He stood up slowly, then looked down at John. 'I'm going to try something. I don't know if it's going to work. This place is pretty heavily soundproofed, but... it's better than just sitting here waiting. Sheriff, you'd better cover your ears.'

* * *

'Guys, focus!' Scott yelled in exasperation, still concentrating on the wind and looking for that small trace of the Sheriff's scent. They'd tracked it into the woods, but it was being confused by the strong smell of animals and trees and dead lives, and the trail was getting harder to pick out.

In theory, Derek's betas should have been helping him, but Scott was starting to worry that he was soon going to have three very big, very violent problems to deal with. Isaac seemed to be under control, despite being fully transformed, but Jackson and Boyd were snarling loudly at each, stalking in a large circle, while Erica growled at them both in encouragement.

Isaac sidled up to Scott and spoke softly, though the others would still be able to hear him. 'They're a few rays of moonshine away from going fully homicidal. And they outnumber us.'

'Thanks for the pep talk, Isaac,' Scott muttered, looking warily at Boyd's bulk and glowing yellow eyes.

'You should keep talking to them. They listen to you. You're pretty much our substitute Alpha right now.'

Scott was about to dismiss the suggestion when he noticed that the others' ears had literally picked up at the word "Alpha" and they were now looking at him and Isaac with interest.

'Yeah,' Scott said loudly, injecting some force into his voice. 'Derek. Your Alpha. Remember him?'

Jackson snapped angrily, but Erica was growling lower now, with more interest, and Boyd was watching Scott silently.

'You want to run around the woods playing tag like a bunch of... like a bunch of cubs, while your Alpha is missing, possibly dying?' Scott asked them, gaining confidence now. 'Well you have fun with that. I hope you like the idea of life as an omega, because that's all you're going to be without Derek.'

A chorus of snarls and yelps rose up in outrage at that, and Scott bared his teeth at them in triumph. Alright, so they were still wolfed-out and a little crazy, but at least now they had a goal beyond just tearing whatever they could find to pieces. After voicing their indignation, the betas began raising their heads and sniffing the air, trying to find any trace of their Alpha.

Scott sighed, closed his eyes and concentrated. _Stiles_ , he thought. _Find Stiles_. Even before he'd become a werewolf he'd had an idea of Stiles' innate smell, and with his new senses it had become even more detailed. The generic soap that he used to wash both his skin and his hair, the mint chewing gum he liked, the edge of warm jitteriness and the sharp smell of Adderall coursing through him. Scott knew Stiles scent almost as well as he knew his own mother's so why couldn't he...

_Oh._

Of course.

Stiles had been _masking_ it.

Changing tack, Scott deliberately recalled a very specific scent that had been masking everything else recently. That aftershave, the stuff that Stiles had taken from his dad and worn far too much of. It might have faded from the Sheriff's trail but Stiles had put enough on that it would be hanging around for ages.

A cool breeze blew in from the west and suddenly Scott caught it. It was the smallest thread of the scent, but it was enough, and as he grinned he heard the betas give a collective howl and saw them suddenly take off, crashing through the undergrowth after something that they had obviously picked up.

Scott clapped a hand onto Isaac's shoulder, both of them in their full wolf forms now with pointed ears and hair crawling down towards they're jawlines.

'Let's go!' Scott said, and they began to run.

* * *

'Stiles?' John prompted shakily, using every ounce of his will power to hold back from crossing the cell and doing... something. Anything to make Stiles stop shaking, to make him take his head out of his hands, to put an end to the audible grinding of his teeth. His face was covered but it didn't look like he had transformed into a werewolf yet.

John and Stiles were on opposite sides of the cell now, with Derek standing between them with his arms folded, like a bodyguard. About fifteen minutes earlier Stiles had crawled away from his father, gasping that they needed to put some distance between them. The Marcuses had taken John's watch and phone, but he suspected that the moon was up. His ears were still ringing from the awful, gut-wrenching howl that Derek had sent into the air for a good twenty minutes before being forced to stop, his voice hoarse and beginning to crack.

'Focus, Stiles,' Derek instructed. 'Don't fight the wolf, because you won't win. You need to make peace with it.'

'I don't want to make peace with it,' Stiles sobbed, finally lifting his head and glaring at Derek. His eyes were their usual dark honey colour, and his teeth were normal and human still.

'Is it that you don't want your father to see you transform?' Derek pressed harshly. 'In case you didn't notice, Stiles, that ship has sailed.'

Stiles let out a roar of frustration and what sounded like severe pain. He wasn't bleeding from his chest any more, but if anything he looked like he was in even more agony than he had been when the bullet first hit him.

'Stay with us, Stiles,' Derek said urgently. 'Change if you need to, but stay with us.'

'I... don't... need to,' Stiles insisted through gritted teeth.

'Son, just do what he says,' John urged, not knowing if it was the right thing, only knowing that Derek Hale probably knew more about this than either of them.

Stiles groaned, convulsed, and then ran a hand over his face. Like a magic trick, it changed as it was revealed once again, and John swallowed hard as he saw Stiles' eyes burn that sickly yellow colour, and watched him stretch wide a mouth full of sharp fangs. His forehead seemed to grow wrinkled and more prominent, and hair sprouted on the sides of his face, his ears changing too and growing more pointed. It was like a hideously realistic Halloween mask.

As John watched, Stiles extended a hand tipped with sharp, deadly, curved claws. He looked at them for a moment, and then furiously stabbed them down into his own thigh, sinking them in up to his knuckle.

'No!' John shouted, rushing forward only to find himself pushed back by Derek and held with ludicrous ease by one strong, pale hand fisted in his shirt.

Blood was spurting over Stiles' hand and pooling on the floor, but when he withdrew his fingers they had only human fingernails, and his face was normal again save for his eyes, which were still bright yellow. 'Pain, right?' he shot at Derek.

'That's not going to work for long,' Derek replied. John couldn't see his face, but the young man sounded strained and unhappy, as though the sight of Stiles maiming himself was too much to bear.

'It has to!' Stiles insisted, his voice deeper than usual.

'What about your anchor?' Derek asked. 'Do you have one?'

There was a short silence, in which Stiles' eyes flicked past Derek and found John's face, looking at him hesitantly. John stared back, trying to communicate the fact that he would still love his son even if he was the sasquatch, the creature from the black lagoon and Godzilla all rolled into one, but somehow unable to vocalise it.

'What do you mean?' he asked instead, addressing Derek without looking at him. 'What anchor?'

'Werewolves stay human by having something to hold onto,' Derek said, his face still turned away from John and hidden. 'A powerful emotion. Anger. Pain. Hate. Fear. Love. Whatever triggers it, we call that an anchor. For me it's...' He paused for a long time, as though he was afraid of giving away too much. 'For me it's my family. What happened to them.'

Stiles looked away from John quickly. Too quickly. Slowly, the Sheriff felt a realisation begin to dawn on him, and as soon as he become absolutely sure it was true he felt the pang of it touch him deep in his chest, with a physical ache. He and Stiles... they had an adversarial relationship at times, it was true, and there had been moments when John had wondered if he was anything more than an annoyance in Stiles' life: someone who stopped him from doing the things he wanted to do, and who nagged him about paying attention in school and for keeping too many secrets.

But just then, as Derek was talking about anchors, Stiles was looking determinedly away from John with tears forming in his eyes.

Certainty coming over him, John took a step forward. Derek immediately threw a hand out to stop him, but John moved around it and nodded stiffly to the older werewolf, trying to let him know that he knew exactly what he was doing.

'What are you doing?' Stiles demanded, pushing his way up the wall and starting to back away from John.

'It's OK, Stiles,' John told him, his voice tight.

'No, Dad, you gotta stay away, you gotta...' Stiles was panicking now, his eyes flaring yellow and then settling down again in bursts.

John took another step towards him. 'It's going to be alright,' he said, swallowing hard. 'Just look at me, Stiles.'

'I don't _want_ to look at you!' Stiles yelled. 'I don't want you to look at me! I'm a freak, I'm a monster...'

'You're my kid,' John said simply, and he reached out and pulled Stiles into a tight, fierce embrace. He felt Stiles gasp and struggle for a moment, before giving in to it and resting his head on John's shoulder, sobbing freely with the kind of emotion that John hadn't heard him reveal so openly since Claudia had died.

They stood there for a moment, Stiles' mouth in easy reach of John's throat if he should decide to suddenly transform and tear into John's jugular, but it was as thought all the supernatural strength had gone out of him and left behind only a miserable and frightened child.

Suddenly, John heard a hiss of breath from nearby. 'You hear that?' Derek asked, taking a step closer to the bars of the prison.

Before John could ask what he meant, he felt Stiles stiffen and heard him say, 'Oh my God...' Slowly Stiles eased out of the hug and stood looking up at the ceiling, totally alert. A grin began to spread across his tear-streaked face. 'Dad?' he said.

'Yeah?'

'You'd better cover your ears again.'


	16. Chapter 16

They heard the howling just before they reached the clearing. It was close, but muffled. Scott knew that with the force and volume and desperation of the howl he should have been able to hear it from many miles away, so for it to be suppressed this much its source had to be underground and behind some very thick walls.

'Who is that?' Isaac asked him, squinting and screwing his face up as listened to the sound. 'I think I can hear Derek, but...'

'It's Stiles,' Scott said confidently. He would recognise Stiles' voice anywhere, even in the depths of a wolf howl. He glanced over his shoulder. 'Crap, the others are catching up. You smell that?'

Isaac nodded, baring his fangs a little in concern. 'There are humans in there.' He was referring to the RV that was parked out in the clearing, right on top of the source of the howl.

As if to illustrate Isaac's point, the door of the RV banged open loudly and a man and a woman stepped out. They were both plain-looking and middle-aged, but the gun that the woman was carrying took away any illusion that they might just be ordinary tourists.

'You think that means the Sheriff's dead?' the man asked in a low, perversely excited whisper. 'Maybe it's some kind of... howl of victory.'

The woman shook her head, looking out at the treeline. 'I heard howling from out there too. I think more of them are coming.'

'Oh _crud_ , and we left the camera down there. I knew we should have brought more than one.'

'Never mind the camera, Jerry, what do you think they're going to do once they figure out we're parked right over the bunker?'

'Well that's why we got the special bullets, ain't it?'

Scott heard Isaac stiffen and glance over at him, but he raised a hand in reassurance. 'These guys don't sound like experts,' he muttered. 'I'd bet dollars to donuts that their special bullets are silver.'

'The silver thing is just a myth, right?' Isaac said, reciting the fact as though reading from a set of internal notes. Scott glanced over at him, impressed. Apparently Derek hadn't wasted time when training his new recruits.

'Yeah. It'll probably still hurt to get shot with one of them, though, so let's try to avoid any violence.'

In retrospect, it was a terrible thing to say, because at that moment Boyd, Erica and Jackson went hurtling over their heads and racing straight towards the RV.

Scott and Isaac looked at each other, horrified, then began sprinting after the other werewolves just as the first shots were hired.

* * *

John swallowed hard and backed up against the wall. Normally he was all for trying to talk angry people down, but he didn't much like his chances with Derek at the moment. He had been perfectly calm until just a few seconds ago, when his head had snapped up sharply as though he'd heard something. His expression had darkened, and then his entire face had shifted: his brow thickening and furrowing; hair sprouting down his cheeks; fangs popping out and glinting in his snarling mouth; ears growing longer and more pointed; irises burning bright red. If John thought Stiles had looked frightening in his wolf form, he was now starting to put it into perspective.

Because it wasn't just Derek's face that was changing. His body was rippling and seeming to swell larger, and John could see thick hair sprouting on his forearms on top of muscles that were growing thicker with each passing second. He curled his fingers, flexing the claws at the end of them, and began pacing back and forth, snarling like a rabid dog.

'Derek?' Stiles said in a quavering voice. John glanced over at him, and was relieved to find that his son, at least, still looked human. He was curling back into the corner, hunched and cringing at each new burst of noise from Derek, as though the sounds were physically paining him. He glanced over at John, his eyes wide. 'Oh man, I think he's about to go full wolf. I heard gunshots up above...'

Stiles stopped speaking, freezing at some sound that John was deaf to, but which caused Derek to suddenly grow about three inches taller and let out a roar that seemed to rattle the very bars of their cage. John was avoiding looking at the man's face, but even in his peripheral vision he could see that it was more animal than human.

Derek moved quickly, like lightning, stopping only to scuff at the ground with his foot like a bull before charging forward and throwing his considerable weight at the bars. There was a sound like meat being violently tenderised, following by a high-pitched singing noise as Derek bounced off the metal. John felt his jaw drop open as he saw that the bars were now ever so slightly bent.

Suddenly, both werewolves flinched again and Stiles whined, 'What is going _on_ up there?'

Derek whipped his head round and John shrank back, pure fear curling in his gut at getting his first clear view of the creature. Derek's shirt and pants were covered in rips and tears from where he had literally burst out of them, and there was nothing human left in his face. In size, he was more like a bear than a wolf. He let out a growl that sounded strangely like a command, and Stiles suddenly cried out and grabbed his head, transforming so fast that it seemed to cause him pain. Wildly, as though someone else was controlling his limbs, he lurched forward with impossible speed and used his body as a battering ram, smashing violently into the already-damaged bars.

'Stiles!' John yelled, unable to help himself, as his son rebounded and staggered, a long stride of skin on his bare arm red and sizzling. No sooner was he out of the way than the enormous black beast that had once been Derek threw itself forward again, crashing against the bars and making them scream in protest.

They did it again, and again, the noise of it deafening to John. He could see that the effort was hurting Stiles, and it seemed that his son was obeying some kind of deep and powerful command from Derek, but John also knew that if he tried to interfere he would probably be torn to pieces - possibly by his own son.

Before long there was a hole in the bars, large enough for a human to slip through. Stiles shook his wolfish head in a dazed fashion, then ran forward again and slipped straight through.

'Derek,' he said groggily as the larger wolf butted furiously against the metal. 'Derek, you gotta change back... you gotta change back to fit through, c'mon.'

The bubbling snarl that rose up in response did not sound like Derek was in the mood for reason, but Stiles ploughed on.

'Come on, man, you can't help them if you're stuck in here smashing your head against the bars like a moron.' In a move that showed zero regard for his own safety, Stiles reached through the bars and grabbed Derek's hairy, clawed forelimb, looking up fearlessly into the glowing red eyes. 'Just change back, just for a second, just so you can get through, come on...'

As John watched, the hair on Derek's back began to disappear, drawing upwards until it reached his normal hairline. The obscenely large muscles of his body began to shrink and he lost height as the shape of his skeleton changed, until once again he was around the same height as Stiles. Finally he looked halfway human again, save for his claws and fangs, and Stiles whispered encouragingly to him as he grabbed him by the shoulder and guided the slightly confused-looking werewolf through the bars.

Once he was free, Derek shifted back immediately, his clothes finally tearing off him completely and fluttering to the ground in tatters. He let out a long howl of triumph and rage, then smashed straight through the heavy wooden door and tore up the stairs beyond it. This was followed by another loud smash, then an almighty creak and crash of metal, as though a truck had been turned over. Overhead, there was a cacophany of snarls and roars punctuated by the occasional crack of a bullet.

Stiles looked up the stairs desperately and was about to follow, but paused when he heard John running up to the bars.

'No, Dad!' the teen said, turning back and holding a hand up to the gap in the bars before John could go through it. The aminalistic features of his face melted away until he looked entirely human again, and frightened. 'You gotta stay here.'

'Yeah, I don't think so,' John scoffed.

'Please, Dad!' Stiles begged. 'You'll be ripped apart, you saw how strong we are. You don't bring a human to a wolf fight.'

'There are two humans up there already,' John snapped. 'I don't care if they're criminals, I'm not going to just sit down here and let them be eaten. And I'm sure as _hell_ not letting you go up there without me.'

'Dad...' There came a howl from above ground and a full-body shudder went through Stiles, closing his eyes and gritting his teeth as they tried to turn back into fangs. ' _No_ , Derek,' he muttered furiously.

Another shot fired overhead, and then there came no more. Stiles opened his eyes slowly.

'I'm not going up there, Dad,' he promised. 'I'm not leaving you down here alone, but if something comes down these stairs then you have to let me deal with it.'

'Stiles? _Stiles? '_

John looked up in surprise at the familiar voice, then stepped back as someone came bounding down the stairs and through the empty doorframe. It was another werewolf, but one that John thought he recognised.

'Scott?' he exclaimed in disbelief.

'Hey, Sheriff,' Scott said, breathing a loud sigh of relief. Then he marched forward and pulled a shocked Stiles into a tight bear hug (wolf hug?), held him for a couple of seconds, then let go and socked him hard in the arm.

'You jerk!' he snapped. 'You're a werewolf and you didn't tell me? You were the first person I told!'

'Actually, I was the one who told you,' Stiles shot back. 'So this makes us square.'

'How the hell does this make us...?'

'Excuse me,' John said loudly, folding his arms and glaring at the two of them with his sternest interrogation room expression. 'Would someone mind telling me just exactly how many of the people I know are werewolves? I think I've had enough surprises for one night.'

Stiles looked around guiltily. 'Uh... well, Dad, Scott is a werewolf too.'

'Thanks, Stiles, I was having trouble figuring that out.'

'So yeah, it's just me and Derek and Scott... and Isaac Lahey and Jackson Whittemore...' He started counting them off on his fingers. 'And Erica Reyes and Boyd... what's Boyd's first name?'

John rubbed his face wearily. 'Is that it?'

'That's everyone in Beacon Hills, as far as I know.' Stiles glanced up the stairs. 'It's all quiet up there now. What happened, Scott?'

Scott sighed and rubbed a hand through his hair. During their conversation the signs of his wolfishness had faded away and he looked like a normal teen once more. 'It's... not good Stiles. I couldn't keep the betas under control and... Jackson got shot, but I think he's going to be OK.' He stopped speaking, but there was clearly more to say.

'What happened to the Marcuses?' John asked steadily.

Scott looked up, but couldn't meet his eye.

* * *

It was just as well that John hadn't eaten anything since his kidnapping, because there was a good chance that he would have brought it up again upon seeing what was left of the Marcuses after being attacked by an entire pack of werewolves. He had emerged from the bunker, which seemed to have been built for the express purpose of holding them down there, to find an RV tipped over on its side and ripped open like a tin can.

There were bits of the two bodies strewn about the clearing. Near the largest collection were three werewolves that John thought he might have recognised in their human forms, from seeing them around Beacon Hills High School. One was lying on his side nursing a wound in his stomach while a fair-haired female whined softly and carded her fingers through his hair, as though grooming him. The other, a dark-skinned and thickly-built young man, was watching the two of them closely, almost jealously.

Derek Hale, in his human form once more and quite unabashedly naked, was standing near them with his arms folded like a bodyguard, watching John warily. When they had first emerged from the bunker, Derek had bounded over to check on Stiles, sniffing angrily at the strange burns on his arm and asking him if he was alright, until John had warned him to back off. He had done so, reluctantly, but only after Stiles had repeated the request with a pleading expression.

Stiles and Scott were now standing next to a boy with curly-brown hair who John recognised as Isaac Lahey. The police department had an ongoing investigation into Lahey, who was currently playing truant from home, but not from school. John had been called out to the Lahey house more than once by neighbours reporting the sounds of a domestic disturbance, so he had deliberately not worked too hard to get Isaac home to his father, who frequently showed up at the station with a red face and white knuckles. He made a mental note to himself to talk to Isaac about becoming an emancipated minor. 

After John had finished clearing up the bodies of course.

'If the Argents hear about this...' Isaac was saying in an urgent, frantic whisper.

'We can explain what happened,' Scott replied, sounding doubtful about it.

'I heard they're not all that understanding.'

'Derek said these guys killed Ben Chaplin. And they attacked us, they're not exactly innocent.'

'You think that's going to make Erica, Boyd and Jackson feel any better tomorrow? Besides, forget the Argents, what about...?' Isaac looked up, saw John watching him, and immediately became very pale.

'Sheriff?'

John turned around, slowly and deliberately, and fixed Derek Hale with his hardest stare and making a mental note to not look anywhere south of Derek's chin. He should have known that werewolves wouldn't be shy about nudity.

'I know I'm not exactly your favourite person in the world right now, but there's something I'd like to talk to you about. Do you think you could hold off from shooting me until I'm finished.'

John lifted his chin a little. 'I don't have my gun on me right now.'

Derek sighed. 'I guess that will do.'

They walked a little way down the road, Derek occasionally glancing back at the other werewolves like an anxious parent. John, who really was an anxious parent, insisted on stopping before they got too far away, and positioned himself so that he could keep half an eye out for Stiles in the distance.

'Right, what do you want?' he asked in cool tones.

Derek glanced over his shoulder before staring into John's face with a slightly disturbing intensity. 'You're holding up well,' he stated. 'Better than a lot of people would in your situation, I think. I'm glad, for Stiles' sake.'

'Yeah, enough with the compliments,' John said, raising a hand impatiently. 'Get to the point.'

'Alright.' Derek clenched his jaw visibly for a moment before speaking again. 'Raising a werewolf isn't easy. Even my own parents had their hands full with me, with my brothers and sisters, and they were werewolves themselves. I know you care a lot about Stiles, that you want the best for him... which is why I'd like you to consider an offer.'

John had a nasty feeling that he knew where this was going, but he merely nodded and waited for Derek to continue.

'I'm going to buy some property soon,' Derek pressed on. 'A... a den, we would call it. Somewhere safe, where the betas can stay, under my supervision. I know that you have the best intentions, but you've already seen that living with a werewolf, especially a young one, can be a burden. A risk.' He looked down pointedly at John's hand, which was still bruised from where Stiles had struck it.

'Stop,' John said harshly, his voice shaking a little. 'Don't you dare.'

'You said you'd hear me out,' Derek continued relentlessly. 'I can talk to Stiles, I can make him think that it's his own idea, but you have to realise that this could be what's best for both of you. Did you know he handcuffs himself to his bed at night? He's terrified of turning in his sleep, of hurting you.' He hesitated for a moment, and John wondered distantly just what Derek was seeing in his face. 'I'm just giving you the option,' Derek concluded, clicking his teeth together in pointed silence, to wait for a response.

'Now you listen to me,' John said, knowing that Derek could probably kill him with one little finger but nonetheless injecting as much threat into his voice as possible. 'Your role in Stiles' upbringing is over. I am his father...'

'And I'm his Alpha,' Derek interrupted suddenly, a low and growling edge to his voice as his upper lip curled in the beginnings of a snarl. 'I know you don't like me, but Stiles needs me. He needs me to train him, to keep him in line, or sooner or later you'll be clearing up a corpse that your son left behind. And I can't guarantee that it will be just another murderer.' He took a couple of deep breaths and his expression softened into something pleading. 'Please. I've seen what happened to omegas and I don't want that to happen to Stiles.'

John turned this over in his mind. He was tempted to spit in Derek's face, to tell him that he would never see Stiles again and simply walk away. But if what the older werewolf said was true, if he was really the only person who could help Stiles, then what sort of father would John be if he stood in the way of that?

'He's not going to live with you,' he said at last. 'He stays at home, with me, until he's done with high school at least. He can spend time with you, but you will not leave me out of the loop. If anything comes around that could put the people of this town in danger, that could put my _son_ in danger, you are going to tell me about it.'

Derek smiled a little, as though John had just passed a test. 'There was another option that I wanted to offer you,' he said by way of response.

'Oh? And what's that?'

Derek answered by opening his mouth and showing John two rows of sharp teeth. John couldn't prevent the shudder that went through him at the sight of them; nor could he disguise his relief when they morphed back into ordinary human teeth and Derek closed his mouth again.

'You're loyal,' he said. 'You're strong. You're brave. All good qualities, and ones that you apparently passed on to your son. If you want it, I'll give you the bite as well.'

John stood for a moment in stunned silence, vaguely aware that his mouth was hanging open. Finally he asked, with great incredulity, 'What?'

Derek looked back over his shoulder for a moment, before continuing in a quieter voice. 'Stiles won't be happy about it. He'll definitely be angry at me for quite a while, but this could be for the best...'

'Hold up.' John raised a hand as though to physically stop Derek's words from reaching him, and gave up on trying to keep his temper in check. 'You know, I think I've had about enough of you telling me what's best for me and my kid. Maybe I haven't been the perfect father to him but I've damn well done everything I could, and I'm proud of who Stiles is growing up to be, so I'm obviously not that terrible.' He glared at Derek and tightened the muscles in his jaw before continuing. 'So if you say that Stiles wouldn't want me to be turned, then you can damn well be sure that you're not coming anywhere near me with those fangs of yours.'

The smile that crossed Derek's face then was strangely sad, as though it had some kind of great weight behind it. 'Yeah. I figured that's what you would say.'

'Besides,' John went on. 'I get the feeling you only want to turn me so that you can have one of your betas in charge of the police department.' He folded his arms. 'Stiles told me a bit about how your packs work. If I let you bite me, I would answer to you. I don't much like that idea.'

Derek raised his eyebrow. 'I think Stiles might have given you the wrong impression. I don't have a very good track record of keeping Stilinskis under control.' He glanced back at the RV and the mess beside it. 'So what are you going to put in your report?'

It was a hard question, and one that John had been asking himself for a while. He had always done things by the book, always upheld the law, never lied. But he'd never before found out that werewolves exist, and that his son was one of them, so apparently there was a first time for everything.

'I'll keep your secret,' he said quietly. 'Come up with some kind of story that's as true as it needs to be. I'll keep in the bit about the Marcuses kidnapping me. Everything else is... another unexplained animal attack, I guess.' He scrubbed a hand over his face wearily at the thought of how hard it was going to be to cover this up.

'Thank you.'

'I'm not doing this for you,' John said derisively, rolling his eyes at Derek as he began to walk away from him. 'The list of people I'd be willing to do anything in order to protect begins and ends with Stiles. You're just lucky that protecting him means protecting you as well.'


	17. Chapter 17

Stiles was well aware that googling "How to come out to your parents" was not worth the effort of the keystrokes because A) his father had already made it clear, during a painfully awkward conversation that seemed to have occurred completely at random when Stiles was about 13, that he didn't care who Stiles went out with so long as they didn't have a criminal record; B) that wasn't even the kind of coming out he had to do; C) he had already come out in an extremely dramatic way; and D) no article on the internet could possibly have the power to improve this situation.

As far as the Sheriff knew, Stiles was home alone. All of the werewolves had left the clearing on his instructions, since they obviously couldn't be there once he called in his deputies. He hadn't said much to Stiles at all since they had got out of the cell, but there were the stormclouds of a Serious Talk hanging over both of them.

Stiles wasn't really home alone. It was kind of hilarious that Derek thought he was being subtle by hanging around outside Stiles' house - as though Stiles couldn't smell his Alpha from practically a mile away. He was tempted to call out loudly to Derek to let him know that Stiles knew he was there, but he didn't actually want Derek to leave just yet. The smell was oddly comforting to his frayed nerves.

Yeah. The Alpha thing. Stiles had assumed that they would sort out a second initiation at a later date, but if the fact that Derek had been able to work his werewolf mind control on Stiles back in the cage was anything to go by, the statement of intent had been enough by itself. Stiles was a beta again: a beta who was planning to have an Extremely Serious Talk with his Alpha on the matter of free will and learning to say "please."

Stiles heard his dad's cruiser at the end of the driveway and quickly shut his laptop and hurried over to his bed. He sat on edge of it, laced his fingers together, and began taking deep breaths as he practiced looking contrite. He was vaguely aware of Derek's scent starting to fade away, and realised that the Alpha must have taken the Sheriff's arrival as a shift change.

The engine of the cruiser trundled to a stop in the driveway and Stiles listened carefully as his dad climbed out of it, trudged slowly up to the front door and took a few extra seconds to unlock it. There was a clatter as he threw his keys onto the table by the door, a heavy sigh, and then the sound of him starting to come up the stairs.

There was a moment in which Stiles was tempted to simply throw himself under the covers and feign sleep again. He heard his father pause outside the door for a long moment and wondered if he, in turn, was considering just walking straight past.

Perhaps he did, and perhaps he didn't. But Stiles stayed where he was, and John came into the room. He looked weary and stressed and even a little afraid, but he closed the door behind him and leaned back against it, looking Stiles over hesitantly.

'Are you OK?' he asked. As Stiles searched for a succinct answer to the question, John waved a hand vaguely over his own chest. 'No lasting damage?'

Stiles had stuffed his bloodstained T-shirt into the laundry basket on his way to the shower. He probably should have just chucked it straight in the trash, but in a weird way he didn't want to get rid of it. He'd been _shot_ , for God's sake. He, Stiles Stilinski, had been shot with a real gun and had a real bullet pass through his body, and he'd survived. He still was struggling to deal with that fact, and he wasn't ready to throw away the only remaining evidence of it just yet.

By way of reply, he lifted his baggy T-shirt for a moment to expose his pale, unmarked chest, and saw his father breathe a heavy sigh of relief before running a hand over his face.

'Jesus,' he said, his voice shaking. 'My kid's a superhero.'

'Not a superhero, Dad,' Stiles corrected gently, though he was flattered by the description and filed it away for possible future use.

'You acted like a hero tonight.' John finally walked over to the bed and sat down next to Stiles, giving him some space but ensuring that he was only an arm's length away. 'Don't tell me you believe what you called yourself,' he said, quiet but stern. 'Don't tell me you honestly think that you're a freak.'

To his horror, Stiles felt tears stinging at the edge of his eyes and looked up at the ceiling, hoping that gravity would drag them back inside his skull. 'I'm not exactly normal, Dad.'

'You never cared about being normal before, Stiles.'

'Yeah, but I don't know if I wanted... this.' Stiles extended his fingers and let the claws extend, felt the sweet stretch of it as he gave a little ground over to the wolf inside him.

John looked at them for a moment in silence. Stiles chanced a look at him, and saw that his father didn't look disgusted or horrified. His brow was furrowed, as though he still couldn't quite believe what he was seeing and he might wake up at any moment, but after a moment he reached out and cupped his hand under Stiles', turning it over to get a better look at the claws.

'Is there a cure?' he asked, before hastily adding, 'I mean, just in case you want to be cured. Not that this is a disease or anything, I...' He sighed in defeat.

'Trying to rewrite the "It's OK to be gay" speech, huh, Dad?' Stiles asked, amused despite himself. 'No, there's no cure. To be honest, I... now I don't even know if I'd still want one, if there was.'

The words surprised Stiles even as he spoke them, but he realised that they were true. Now that he was past his initial outrage at being turned against his will, and was coming to grips with the fears of what he might do, it was becoming possible to see the good things in what he had become. He could keep up with Derek and Scott, and he had a pack to belong to. His dad wouldn't have to worry about him getting hurt, not as much, not any more, and Stiles could protect his father if he needed to. If, God forbid, it ever became necessary again.

And from the small snippets he could remember of running in the woods with Derek on his first night - the strength, the joy, the companionship - Stiles didn't think he could give all that up now.

'Alright,' John said at last. 'I'd love to talk about this more, but if I don't go to bed right now I'm going to pass out. Tomorrow we're going to sit down and you're going to explain this thing properly, and we're going to establish some ground rules.'

'No biting the neighbours or clogging the sink with wolf hair?'

'That'll do for a start,' John said seriously, but there was a smile in it.

* * *

'Again.'

Stiles had picked himself up off the floor the last five times, but this time he simply groaned and refused to do anything more than lift himself up on his elbows, watching the bruises on his body fade almost as soon as they formed. 'No way,' he said defiantly. 'I'm done.'

In a flash, Derek was kneeling down next to him and flashing both his fangs and the red glow of his eyes bare inches away. He moved so fast that Stiles nearly jumped out of his skin.

'You're done when I say you're done.'

'What do you want from me?' Stiles spat. 'You're an Alpha. I'm a freakin' beta. You're going to beat me every time no matter what I do.'

'I will if that's your attitude,' Derek sneered. But he stood up and turned away. 'Fine. Jackson.'

The teen looked up and scowled at the mention of his name. 'Oh come on, haven't you beaten on me enough for one day...'

'Yes. Now let's see if you can handle Stiles.'

A hush fell over the clearing. They were outside in the fading sunlight, the Hale house rising up behind them like a silent judge. Erica, Boyd and Isaac were sitting off to one side, nursing the wounds that they'd picked up in their own brawls, but Isaac - ever the peacemaker - stood up.

'I'll fight Stiles,' he said hastily, moving his body a little ahead of Jackson. 'I'm feeling better now...'

But it was too late. Jackson shoved Isaac back with one hand and bore down on Stiles with a frankly terrifying grin on his face. With his werewolf hearing, Stiles heard Erica mutter, 'Here we go again,' and then there were claws slamming down towards his face.

Stiles rolled out of the way just in time, ignoring the screaming protest in his weary muscles, and forced himself back to his feet. A rush of dizziness came over him and he glanced at Derek out of the corner of his eye in panic, silently begging him to see that Stiles was in no condition to fight, but the Alpha was merely standing there with his arms folded, as though bored.

Jackson dashed forward and Stiles lurched out the way just in time, clutching at his stomach. For some reason that he couldn't quite fathom, Jackson seemed to hate his guts more than he ever had before. Maybe it had something to do with Lydia very publicly turning down Jackson's attempt to take him back. More likely, Stiles thought, Jackson belief that his own werewolf status had somehow been made less special by being shared with a loser like Stiles.

Jackson used this brief moment of reflection to dart in quickly and slam his fist into Stiles' side. Stiles felt one of his ribs shatter and, at the same time, heard a whine of distress from one of the other werewolves. He didn't have time to figure out which, because in the next moment he was knocked sideways by Jackson's other fist slamming into the side of his head.

The trees spun all around him, but a sudden surge of adrenaline and fury cleared Stiles' head and he came back swinging, extending his claws and slashing at Jackson and _yes_ \- he caught the bastard, right across the cheek, drops of blood flying through the air as Jackson staggered back in surprise, touching a hand to his stupid lacerated cheek.

Stiles followed it up with a quick succession of rabbit punches to Jackson's torso, only for Jackson to dodge around him and wrap an arm tightly around his throat, squeezing. Spots danced in front of Stiles' eyes as he clawed - literally - at Jackson's forearm, all to no avail. Things went very bright for a moment, and then they started to grow dark as Stiles struggled for breath that simple wasn't there.

OK, this fight was over. It was time for Jackson to let go now. Stiles wasn't happy about it, but he could take the loss. He tried to reach up and tap Jackson on the shoulder, but his arms were heavy and weak and it would be so much easier to just give up, just let himself sink...

Stiles wasn't sure if he passed out or not, but when he opened his eyes again he was lying in the dirt. Somewhere overhead he could hear Derek saying, '-was weakened, you should have been able to take him down faster than that.'

Then Boyd was there, helping Stiles slowly to his feet, saying, 'Easy, easy.' Stiles could smell the concern on him; as betas of the same pack, they were like werewolf brothers, and theoretically seeing one another in pain was supposed to be distressing. Jackson didn't seem to have received this memo.

Holding his sore, aching side in one hand and feeling worse than he had in a long time, Stiles watched Derek clap a hand onto Jackson's shoulder and shake him with Derek's own special brand of encouragement - one that often came with a bruise. Jackson shrugged him off, but walked away with a slightly smug upward turn to his chin. He looked at Stiles with cold arrogance as he walked past.

'OK, that's enough for one day,' Derek announced. 'Go home. Heal up. Get changed. We'll meet up again Tuesday evening.'

'We have lacrosse practice then,' Jackson said laconically.

Derek scowled heavily, as though lacrosse was a personal affront to him. 'Monday evening, then.'

Erica and Boyd walked off into the woods together, walking quite close as they had come to do lately, and Jackson got into his stupid flashy sports car. Isaac, for whom home was the Hale house, wrapped his arms around himself and walked up the steps to the porch, disappearing inside.

Stiles didn't leave.

After a few moments, Derek seemed to finally accept that his beta wasn't going to go anywhere until he did something about it. He sighed irritably, and snapped, 'What?'

They hadn't spoken alone very much since the night of the kidnapping, nearly a month ago now. Derek had texted Stiles a few days afterwards to give him details of the first pack training session and they'd all met regularly since then. Stiles had become a more skilled fighter during that time, but he'd also endured an ungodly number of bruises and he'd seen the other betas limping away with open wounds and broken limbs. Sure, they all healed up within a couple of hours, but that didn't stop it from hurting.

And the really disgusting thing was that the pain wasn't even the biggest thing bothering Stiles; it was the change in his relationship with Derek. His brief memory of being in Derek's pack had been just the two of them, running together in the woods and talking, but this was more like being in a classroom where all the other kids seemed to get more attention than Stiles. And that - the fact that he saw it that way - was pathetic.

True to the analogy, Derek currently looked like an annoyed teacher who was being forced to stay after work because of a pupil who just wouldn't leave. 'What do you want, Stiles?' he asked again.

'Is this really freakin' necessary?' Stiles demanded, hating the way his voice cracked.

Derek shrugged coldly. 'Not at all. If it gets too tough for you, feel free to quit again. I've got other betas who can handle a little pain.'

Stiles felt his eyes glow yellow in a mix of rage and hurt. 'Is that all we're good for?' he demanded. 'Is that what it means, to be in a pack? Is it all about enduring pain, or is there ever anything else?'

For a moment there was a flicker in Derek's expression, like something caged and being held back by iron bars, but a second later it was gone. 'You're stronger now, aren't you?' he said. 'You're a better fighter.'

'Yeah, good for me, I really kicked ass today,' Stiles retorted bitterly.

Derek rolled his eyes. 'I don't have time for your self-pity, Stiles. If you think you're not good enough, then get better. That's the only solution.' He turned away and began walking up towards the house.

Stiles stared after him, hating him with a burning fury, and then turned on his heel and tore away into the woods, letting his wolf out and snarling as he ran.

He was a couple of miles away when he gave in, let himself melt back to become fully human again and leaned back against a tree trunk. He slid down it, deliberately scraping his back against the rough bark, and dropped his head into his hands, a sob of anguish escaping him.

Stiles had realised it about a week ago. Derek had been explaining something, some kind of fighting technique, and Stiles had been staring at his hands, and the way his lips moved (the way he smacked them occasionally, as though nervous), and the tug of skin over his adam's apple and the peaks and valleys of his voice. It was then that Stiles had realised it, and he had felt a tug in his gut and had been unable to concentrate on anything else for the rest of the session.

Afterwards he had gone home and, after ensuring that his father was still at work, Stiles had yelled at himself in the bathroom mirror for a full five minutes. He'd shown his fangs, let his eyes glow, as though he could scare himself into submission. _You did this for years with Lydia, you're finally getting over her and now you want to move on to someone even more out of your league?_ he had snarled. _What the fuck is your problem, Stilinski?_

'What the fuck is your problem, Stilinski?' he muttered again, sitting in the woods with his body and soul aching. He wiped a hand over his face and leaned back against the tree trunk, focusing on letting himself heal up. He would be back again on Monday, after all.


	18. Chapter 18

'I still can't believe you drank the Derek Hale Kool Aid, dude,' Scott said, shaking his head at Stiles as the two of them got changed into their lacrosse uniforms.

'Hey, not all of us have what it takes to do the whole lone wolf thing,' Stiles protested. 'Besides, it's not so bad once you get past the regular beatings. And Derek's horrible personality. And...' He stopped and glanced over his shoulder, finding Jackson glaring at him whilst carrying on a conversation with Danny. 'And Jackson's breath,' he continued, speaking in a confidential whisper but knowing that he would be overheard anyway. 'It's toxic, like hanging out with walking sewer.'

'You're real funny, Stilinski,' he heard Jackson mutter from the other side of the room, to Danny's audible confusion. Stiles grinned.

Scott was still looking at him warily. 'We don't even know what Derek is planning,' he said. 'What if he suddenly decides that I'm a threat to his territory or something?'

'Then he's an idiot and I'm siding with you,' Stiles said firmly .'It's not even close to how you're probably imagining it. He doesn't feel like a leader, more like a really aggressive personal trainer.'

Scott picked up his lacrosse stick and frowned as they began walking out onto the field. 'That's not how it's supposed to be, right?'

'Try telling Derek that. I did, and all I got were a few extra insults.'

It occurred to Stiles as Finstock started assigning positions to each of them that he no longer really had any incentive to hold back. Scott and Jackson already knew that he was a werewolf now and his skills weren't likely to stand out on a team that already had two extraordinary players. Over the past few weeks he'd been playing normally out of habit, but after the beating that Jackson had given him Stiles suddenly felt like handing out a little pain of his own.

Luckily he and Jackson were playing on opposite teams during the practice, which meant that Stiles wouldn't need to self-sabotage. He glanced over at the other teen as they lined up and got ready, then muttered under his breath, 'What do you think, Whittemore? Can you still take me on without Derek here to soften me up first?'

Stiles saw Scott glance worriedly over at him, but he was too distracted by the sight of Jackson actually snorting out a hot breath into the cold air, like a bull. Stiles laughed to himself, baring his teeth as he prepared to let loose.

Finstock blew the whistle and Stiles saw Jackson making a beeline for him out of the corner of his eye. He ignored him completely and knocked another stick aside to scoop up the lacrosse ball, before racing up the field at a pace that he hoped was within human limitations.

'Pass it, Stilinski!' he heard Finstock yell, but it was too late. Stiles had already feinted to the left and, when Danny readied himself to block it, slammed the ball into the right side of the net. He grinned in triumph and took a short, sweet moment in which to bask in Finstock's shocked expression.

Then he heard Scott yelling, from somewhere behind him, 'Stiles!'

He didn't need to warning. He'd been ready for it, and Stiles ducked away just as Jackson came sprinting up behind him, slamming his stick down low and crashing it against Jackson's shins, making him stumble. The other teen whipped his head around and snarled - eyes burning yellow inside his helmet - before launching himself at Stiles again.

'Oh for... Whittemore, knock it off,' Finstock yelled in exasperation. 'We need to- oh crap!'

The "oh crap" was justified. Jackson had managed to get in under Stiles' defences and had punched him so hard in the stomach that Stiles had actually flown several feet in the air and landed on his back. He struggled to breathe, found that he couldn't, and decided that he didn't need oxygen to fight anyway. Scrambling back to his feet and growling, Stiles darted forward and tackled Jackson around the middle, ploughing him into the muddy grass.

As an act of vengeance, Stiles drove a fist low and dirty into Jackson's stomach, hearing the air punched out of him with satisfaction. He could hear Danny yelling at Finstock to break them up, but Stiles ignored him. His vision had gone a little red at the edges with the satisfaction of finally, _finally_ getting his own back at Jackson for the years of bullying and general assholery. Squeezing a hand tight around his fellow beta's throat, Stiles leaned in and hissed, 'Just what I thought. You're the bitch of the pack, Jackson.'

Then there was an odd sensation in Stiles stomach and he realised that Jackson had his claws extended and was pressing them up against Stiles' stomach, piercing the fabric of his shirt and raising drops of blood on his skin as Jackson drew his teeth back warningly over long fangs.

Suddenly someone was tugging at Stiles' shoulders, dragging him back, and saying in a rushed whisper, 'Stop it, _stop it_ , break it up, you guys! People are _looking!'_

Stiles reluctantly allowed Scott to pull him off Jackson and took a deep breath as he quietly tidied away any signs of wolfishness that might have crept out during the brawl. As soon as it no longer looked like Jackson and Stiles were on the verge of tearing each other to shreds, Finstock chose his moment to jump in and grabbed both of them by the backs of their shirts, shook them a little and then yelled at them to go back inside, get changed, and await his wrath.

Fifteen minutes later they were sat side-by-side in Finstock's office, arms folded and glaring sullenly at the floor.

'What the hell is up with you two?' Finstock demanded, running his hands through his perpetually messy hair. 'You're supposed to be part of the same team!'

Neither one of them replied.

* * *

Derek had anticipated something like this when he had recruited a small band of hormonal teenagers as his pack, especially when one of them was Erica, but he hadn't anticipated that it would be this bad. He finally had everything moved in to the new den - a converted warehouse building in the industrial part of town, with a nice living area upstairs for Derek and Isaac and any of the others, if they needed a place to crash. The training area was downstairs in the basement area, with soundproofed walls so that no one would hear the snarls and yelps of pain from outside.

He was training them hard, though there were no current threats presenting themself. The Sheriff was covering the investigation into the killings and ensuring that everyone came to the wrong conclusions, but Derek knew that it was only a matter of time before another pack tried to move in on his territory; places like the preserve were becoming increasingly harder to find as the cities and towns expanded outwards.

The betas were doing well, though Derek would only tell them so indirectly. But they were - well, they were teenagers. The other day Erica and Boyd had come to training acting extremely weirdly around one another. Hoping to tire them out badly enough that they wouldn't have the energy to think about any stupid squabble, Derek had paired off with Erica and pushed her harder than he ever had before. Then, in the middle of him yelling at her to be smart and to try to do the unexpected, she had suddenly surged up into his arms and planted her mouth on his in an airtight kiss.

Boyd had immediately gone nuts, wolfing out and baring his fangs in outrage, but Derek had also felt a quiet and intense pulse of fury from the corner of the room. Pushing Erica off him, he had glanced over and seen Stiles standing against the wall, his arms folded tightly and an expression on his face like he was about to puke pure bile.

Short version? Derek clearly had a teenage love triangle on his hands, and he had no idea how to deal with it.

Stiles had asked him, a couple of weeks ago, whether there was anything more to being a pack than the training and the pain that came with it. Derek had walked away from him, mainly because he could clearly remember that there was a lot more to a pack than this, but he had no idea how to engineer it. He had grown up in a werewolf family, where they had all known each other from birth. How was he supposed to reproduce that kind of bond in a pack of adolescents that he barely knew, except by forging them together in the fire of a fight?

To make matters worse, he'd overheard Isaac and Boyd muttering together about some kind of fight that had happened between Stiles and Jackson during a lacrosse practice session. He'd walked over to ask for more details, but as soon as they saw him the two betas stopped talking and averted their gaze, and would only give monosyllabic answers to his questions.

Boyd and Erica were still acting frostily towards one another the next time they all met up, but Stiles and Jackson seemed to have adopted a policy of each pretending that the other didn't exist, and Stiles seemed marginally happy about it. When Derek returned from the bathroom, Stiles and Isaac were already sparring in a light-hearted way: Stiles dodging around and ducking and weaving in a jokey fashion while Isaac stood still and tried to stifle a grin. Finally Stiles bounded forward and tried to tackle him, only for Isaac to dodge neatly around him and slap him on the back of the head.

Derek actually managed to forget his many troubles for a moment, smiling a little at the sight of the two betas grappling with each other in a jokey way. Stiles managed to pull off a pretty impressive wrestling move that he'd probably seen on TV and dropped Isaac to the ground.

This was one thing that Derek was able to take pride in, the knowledge that his pack was at least growing stronger. It was full of rough edges where his betas didn't quite fit and there was a distance between each of them that he didn't like, but individually they were becoming better fighters and faster thinkers. Derek was starting to think that if another pack moved in on their territory, there was enough talent here to drive them off - even if he had to roar at them every time he needed to keep them under control.

'Alright,' he said sharply, clapping his hands as he walked into the midst of the group. Isaac and Stiles disentangled themselves quickly and scuttled back to complete a semi-circle around Derek. Jackson was sitting on a wooden box that served as temporary furniture, scrolling through his phone in a bored and deliberately obstinate fashion. Boyd and Erica kept glancing at each other, though never at the same time. Isaac was quiet and attentive as usual, but Stiles was staring out of the window in distraction.

Suddenly irritated, Derek clapped his hands again, the sound ringing through the den and making the betas wince at the loudness of it. 'Hey!' he barked. 'When I'm talking, you pay attention, got it?'

'Yes, sir,' Stiles muttered sarcastically, touching a couple of fingers to his forehead in a mock-salute without bothering to look at Derek.

A noisy growl rumbled in Derek's chest as he lost his temper and the betas all suddenly cringed, even Stiles. Jackson dropped his phone onto the floor in shock.

Derek felt simultaneous pangs of regret and satisfaction. He crooked a finger at Stiles and said, 'Stilinski, since you're apparently so eager to get started, you're up first.'

Stiles glanced at Jackson on his right and Isaac on his left, but when both of them looked away he sighed and stood up, walking forward with his shoulders hunched a little. The other betas scooted back as Stiles and Derek took up positions facing each other. Derek had adopted a fighting stance but Stiles was standing loosely, unprepared, looking suddenly tired.

'Look, can we not...?' he began, but Derek leapt forward and cut him off by slamming his hand up against Stiles' throat and extending the claws, just enough to prick his skin.

'Dead,' he stated coldly. 'Want to try again?'

All the humor gone from his face, Stiles stared up at Derek and slowly reached up to pull his arm away. Derek let him do it and put his claws away again, traces of Stiles' blood staying behind on the tips of his human fingernails.

He waited for Stiles to make a move, but Stiles just stared at him wearily. Derek feinted as though he was about to attack from the left, but Stiles didn't even move to defend himself. Uncertainly, Derek raised his fists and - when Stiles didn't respond - lashed out with a sharp and vicious punch to the teenager's left cheek.

It didn't feel good. Sparring with the betas never felt particularly gratifying, but there was something about the way that Stiles just took the blow, his head snapping to the side with the force of it and staying there, that drained the fire from Derek's blood.

'This isn't for my goddamn benefit, Stiles,' Derek snarled. 'You have to fight back.'

'Whatever,' Stiles muttered. At Derek's warning growl he half-heartedly raised his fists in a defensive manner, but didn't make any move to attack.

Derek waited for a few seconds, then darted forward and lashed out with his foot, catching Stiles in the stomach and sending him crashing to floor, gasping for breath. When he didn't get up of his own accord, Derek grabbed him by the arm and hauled him up before slapping him lightly on his unmarked cheek.

'We don't have time for your bullshit drama, Stiles,' he snarled.

'I'm not gonna fight you!' Stiles said defiantly. 'You can beat the shit out of me again if you want, but I'm not going to give you the satisfaction...'

'Give me the...?'

'-The satisfaction of thinking this is for anyone's benefit but your own!'

Derek gritted his teeth and for the hundredth time cursed himself for turning a bunch of teenagers and bring their stupid hormones and mood swings into his pack. What Stiles was saying was ridiculous, and the proper Alpha thing to do would probably be to give him what he asked and just continue battering him, but Derek couldn't bring himself to do it. Instead he let him go so abruptly that Stiles nearly fell over again, and turned back to face the other betas.

'Alright, since Stiles has wimped out that leaves us with a nice even number. Isaac and Boyd, you two can pair up and Erica and Jackson can... Where do you think you're going?'

Stiles was already halfway to the basement door. 'I have homework I could be doing,' he called over his shoulder.

'Get back here!' Derek snarled, causing Stiles to stumble at the pull of his Alpha's order. 'If you're too chickenshit to join in then you can at least learn something by watching.'

'Gee, as tempting as you make that sound, Derek, I think I'll pass.' Forgetting to even pick up his jacket, Stiles began making his way up the stairs a little too quickly, trying to disguise the fact that he was obviously fleeing.

Derek fought to keep his wolf under control as he called back to his other betas, 'Get started, I want to see you all training when I get back,' before chasing Stiles up the stairs.

The boy was almost at the front door when Derek put in a burst of speed and blocked his path, reaching out a hand to shove him backwards. 'I'm only going to say this once,' he stated in a dangerous voice. 'You come back here with a serious attitude change or you don't come back at all.'

Satisfied with having gotten in the last word, he began making his way back to the basement, but apparently Stiles was in no mood to leave things there.

'Yeah?' Stiles snapped, following Derek and denying him any space. 'Well you want to know what I think? I think you don't know what the hell you're doing.'

Derek bared his fangs in sudden fury and snarled, 'That's what you think, is it?'

Stiles staggered back a little and Derek saw fear and the temptation to submit flash briefly onto his face, but he stood his ground. 'Yeah, it is! I think you're some stupid kid who became an Alpha basically by accident and now you have a pack and you don't know what to do with us...'

'This is the last time I'm going to tell you to shut up.'

'And that's OK!' Stiles continued relentlessly. 'It's not your fault that no one left you a goddamn manual for this stuff, but if you'd just be honest with us then maybe we could figure it out together.'

'Stiles...'

'That's gotta be better than just training us every week until we're strong enough to actually be a threat to you. You really think that's a good idea? What if one day Jackson decides that he wants to be Alpha, and he knows exactly how to fight you?'

'Get out!' Derek roared, shoving Stiles hard in the chest and feeling where the muscles there had thickened a little during the weeks of brutal sparring.

'I'm saying this because I care about you, you idiot!' Stiles yelled.

'That's bullshit and you know it!' Derek snapped.

'You...' Stiles gasped as though he had been slapped, and then he surged forward and grabbed Derek's face in both hands. At first Derek thought Stiles was attacking him, but then it turned out that Stiles was kissing him - mashing his mouth desperately against Derek's surprised, unresponsive lips. It was nothing like when Erica had done it; that had felt tactical and calculating. Stiles kissed Derek like he was giving up.

A second or two later he pulled back and let go of Derek's face, staring at him with shining yellow eyes.

'There,' he said bitterly. 'Satisfied?'

Derek got the strangest sense that Stiles wasn't talking to him.

He was still standing, stunned into silence, when he realised that Stiles was running away, and realised at the same time that such a thing was awful and wrong. Yet he couldn't move. He was pinned to the spot, helpless to do anything about it was Stiles slammed his way through the door and out into the night, running straight past his Jeep and continuing onwards until the darkness swallowed him up.

Derek stared after him until finally his limbs unfroze and he lifted a hand to his lips. They were still tingling from the rough touch of Stiles' soft mouth, and Derek felt a kind of phantom pressure there, as though Stiles wasn't quite gone just yet.


	19. Chapter 19

'Wow,' Scott said, staring straight ahead and looking dazed.

Stiles lay back on his bed, covered his face with a pillow and made a pretty respectable attempt at smothering himself. When that failed he let out a long groan of frustration and humiliation.

'And you just ran?' Scott asked after a moment.

Stiles took the pillow off his face and glared at his best friend. 'In the interests of not being brutally murdered before I even graduate high school - yes, Scott, I ran.'

'Derek wouldn't murder you,' Scott reassured him, though he didn't sound completely convinced. After a pause he added, 'I can see him lightly maiming you, but murder? No way.'

'Maybe I can convince him it was an accident,' Stiles said miserably. 'Like I was trying to headbutt him and failed.'

'How the hell did you go from yelling at him to kissing him anyway? I thought you only had eyes for Lydia?'

'I'm a teenager, Scott. I'm a big bundle of anger and horniness, and sometimes the two things get mixed up.'

Stiles had called Scott almost immediately after running all the way home from the den, and now they were going through what could only be called a post-mortem of the situation. Stiles had left his Jeep behind in his panicked flight and was half considering just leaving it there as a kind of apology gift to Derek - and also because he was too scared to go back and get it.

Suddenly Stiles' phone started ringing, nearly making him jump out of his skin. He got up off the bed and walked over to the desk to look at the screen, not even daring to touch it. When he saw the caller ID he sprang back as though the phone was a live snake.

'It's him, oh God, it's him, he's calling to recite some kind of werewolf death curse at me!' Stiles babbled manically. He glanced over at Scott, and found to his outrage that the other teenager was clearly trying to hide a grin.

'Maybe he's calling to ask for an encore,' Scott suggested.

'Scott, this is serious!'

'Dude, not too long ago you got locked in an underground bunker by a couple of murderers, who then shot you in the chest and forced you to transform into a werewolf in front of your dad. I'm not saying that you kissing Derek isn't a big deal, but just try to have some perspective.'

Stiles could see his point, but he threw Scott a dirty look anyway. After all the times he'd listened to Scott wailing about Allison like their relationship was as fundamental as the fabric of time and space, Stiles was entitled to a little romantic crisis of his own. Not that this was a romantic crisis - you needed romance for that first instead of just a big mess.

The phone stopped ringing.

There was a knock at the bedroom door.

Stiles backed away in terror, thinking with sudden and irrational certainty that Derek had got into the house and was about to burst in with his fangs bared. But it was only John who came in, dressed in his work uniform and looking wearily amused.

'Everything alright in here?' he asked. 'I came home and heard panicking.'

'Fine, everything's fine, no problem whatsoever,' Stiles said, cramming all the words together into the same space so that they came out nearly incomprehensible.

The Sheriff's eyes narrowed suspiciously. 'Huh. Why am I not convinced?'

'Stiles has love troubles,' Scott piped up, like the scummy little back-stabbing rat that he was. Stiles turned around and fixed him with a murderous glance.

'Oh, good. I was starting to worry that all your problems were supernatural,' John said, grinning. 'Stiles, do we need to have a father-son talk or...?'

'Oh no. God, no. A thousand times no. In the same of all that is holy, no...'

'Thanks, I get it.' John nodded at Scott in a friendly way and added, 'I'll leave him in your capable hands,' before leaving and pointedly closing the door behind him.

Stiles peeked at Scott through his fingers. 'Alright, I'm putting my life choices in your hands since I'm clearly terrible at taking responsibility for them. Scott, what should I do?'

Scott thought it over for a moment. 'Well since your car is already parked outside his house, you might as well go and stand in front of it, hold a boombox over your head and play "In Your Eyes" at him...'

'Scott...'

'Or maybe "Hungry Like the Wolf..."'

'I hate you so much.'

Eventually it got dark and Scott left, taking his so-called pearls of wisdom with him. Stiles got ready for bed and then sat down on the edge of it, dropped his head into his hands and wished desperately that he could take back what he had done. If he had just managed to keep his stupid temper in check then everything would have been fine, but instead Stiles had burned his most important bridge. Hell, he'd blown it up with TNT. He had nuked that bridge from outer space and...

There was someone crossing the lawn outside.

Stiles looked up sharply, then cast his eyes around for some kind of weapon, before remembering that he had two hands and a mouth full of them. Extending his claws and listening carefully, he heard the intruder stop right underneath his window, which was just slightly open. Then the wind direction changed and a familiar scent came rolling into Stiles' room.

His eyes widened and he darted across the room, slamming the window down all the way and locking it just as Derek's head appeared outside, damp with rain and looking faintly annoyed at the welcome. He was apparently clinging on to the wall by burying the claws of one hand in the brickwork, because he brought his other hand up and rapped sharply on the glass.

'Open up, Stiles,' he said. His voice was slightly muffled, but Stiles could still hear him.

He shook his head and whispered fiercely, thankful that his dad was downstairs in the kitchen, 'Nope, sorry, not in the mood to die today.'

'You realise that I could easily smash your window and climb in anyway, right?'

Stiles glared at him, then reluctantly leaned over and unlocked the window. He backed away immediately afterwards, as though he'd just poked a wasps' nest with a sharp stick. He kept his claws out and he could feel his fangs extending as well, but as Derek opened the window and climbed in he looked calm, collected and human. Once he was inside he even had the decency to close it behind him, speaking as he did so.

'You weren't answering your phone, Stiles. What happened today...'

'Woah.' Stiles held up a hand and, thankfully, Derek paused. 'If you're going to insist on talking about this here then I at least want to level the playing field.'

He reluctantly de-wolfed as he grabbed a pillow off the bed and held it in front of his striped boxers before casting an eye around for his jeans. Stiles could see out of the corner of his eye that Derek was raising his stupid eyebrow in a condescending way, but ignored it as he found the item of clothing tucked under his bed and turned around as he pulled the jeans up, hiding his long legs and knobbly knees. For good measure he grabbed a plaid shirt off a pile of laundry and pulled that on as well. Fully armored, Stiles wandered over to his desk chair and sat down, staring at Derek expectantly.

The Alpha was looking troubled. 'I didn't come here to...'

'Oh, I know,' Stiles interrupted hastily, trying and failing to keep the bitterness out of his voice. 'Believe me, I am painfully aware that neither you nor anybody else ever comes through my window - or my door, like, you know, a normal person - with sexy intentions, no matter how much I might want them to. All the more reason to not humiliate myself further by sitting around in my underwear while you're fully dressed.'

'So...' Derek cleared his throat awkwardly. 'At least now I know what's been bothering you.'

Stiles squeezed his eyes tightly shut in frustration. 'This isn't... I meant everything I said, Derek.' He opened his eyes again and stared earnestly at the Alpha. 'Don't try and brush it all off as some stupid teenage crush talking. I do think that you're out of your depth and I do want to help. I want... look, it turns out that the pack are actually kind of alright and I want us to work out, but keeping us at each other's throats all the time isn't working. You know it isn't.'

Derek bit his lip, his full and gorgeous and inviting... _stop it, Stiles_. He bit his lip for a moment and then sighed as though in pain before admitting, 'You're right.'

'Of course I'm right.' Stiles tried not to look too smug. 'Look, what we have to do is get some love going.' He hesitated and then verbally back-pedalled furiously. 'Not... Oh God, not in that way. I mean with the pack. We don't have to stop sparring completely but we need to spend some downtime together as well. Go for a run in the woods together, or get a terrible movie in, or go out clubbing. You're acting like you need to think up excuses to get us together and put it all on a rota or something, but we're pack, Derek. We enjoy being together, you don't need to force it.'

'What, even with Jackson?' Derek pressed, raising an eyebrow.

Stiles rolled his eyes. 'Well, Jackson's a special case. To be honest, we never used to hate each other this much. I think it's because we can both feel the pack bond trying to force us to like each other, and we're resisting it. Or it could just be because Jackson is an ass.'

'He knows that you're stronger than him,' said Derek.

Stiles stared at him. 'What?'

Derek looked a little embarrassed for a moment, but he held Stiles' gaze steadily as he continued. 'You're stronger than Jackson. You're stronger than all of them, and not just because you've been a werewolf for longer.

'Oh come on,' Stiles laughed. 'Look at me, I might be all supernatural now but I'm not exactly Schwarzenegger over here. Boyd could probably crush me with his thumb. Hell, Erica could...'

'We both know that's not true, Stiles. You might not look as strong as the others, but even _that_ works to your advantage. People underestimate you. You let them. You...'

'OK, I get it,' Stiles interrupted hurriedly, because if Derek kept looking at him like that and paying him compliments he was going to need to grab the pillow again. 'I'm a bruiser. My ego is super inflated right now, thanks. So you'll try what I suggested? The pack bonding thing?'

'Yes, I'll try it. If you...' Derek hesitated.

'Oh, I'll help you organise it all. I'm the life of the party.'

'Good. And...' Stiles took a deep breath. 'Can we forget... the other thing? Please?'

Derek cocked his head to one side as though considering it. 'Is it going to be a problem?' he asked bluntly.

Stiles waved a hand. 'Psssh. I'm the king of unrequited romance. I can handle it.'

Derek still looked troubled. 'I don't want...'

'Forget it, Derek. It won't be a problem, I promise. Your lips are safe from any future assault. From me, anyway.' Stiles thought of someone else launching themselves at Derek and his stomach twisted unpleasantly in irrational envy of this phantom.

For a moment Derek just stood there with his mouth slightly open, looking strangely out of his depth. Then his expression turned cool and he nodded at Stiles in a weirdly formal way before climbing back out of the window, even taking the time to close it behind him.

Stiles listened to Derek's footsteps fade away into the distance, then lay down on his bed, folding his arms behind his head and using them as a pillow as he stared at the ceiling, frowning. It took a long time for him to fall asleep.


	20. Chapter 20

So, fun factoid: apparently every werewolf movie ever made was about sex. Sexual themes. Sexual scenes. Just _sex_ all over the place.

It had originally seemed like a great idea to make their first pack bonding session a werewolf movie marathon, and in some ways it was working well. Boyd and Erica seemed to have settled whatever problems they'd been having and the two of them were taking up an entire couch by lying stretched out on it, Erica's head on Boyd's chest with his fingers idly combing through her hair. Jackson had moodily taken his own armchair, but even he was forgetting to look annoyed as he became absorbed in the movie. Isaac was sitting cross-legged on the floor and Stiles was reclining on a beanbag. He couldn't see Derek, but with the Alpha's scent so strong in the air it felt like he was crawling around under Stiles' very skin.

He'd convinced Derek to invest in a projector and a big white home cinema screen, since they certainly weren't wanting for space in the den, and this meant that whenever the sex scenes played out they were _huge_. There were a lot of sex scenes, and Stiles was surprised that he was the only one agitated by them.

This wasn't an exaggeration, right? First they'd watched some movie where lycanthropy was used as a metaphor for a teenage girl experiencing sexual maturity, and even all the gross period stuff wasn't quite enough to counteract the scene where she was riding this dude in his car and (oh god) scratching him with her claws, something that Stiles found himself worryingly turned on by.

Then they watched _The Howling_ , which had pretty much started out in a porno theatre, and then there was sex in front of a campfire with the couple wolfing out as they did the deed and yep, apparently that was a kink that Stiles' reptile brain approved of as well.

Then they watched John Landis' classic contribution to the genre, and things got ridiculous. There was a hot dark-haired werewolf dude running around naked in the woods for what felt like ages, and a ludicrously steamy sex scene, then _another_ goddamn scene in a porno theatre. By this point Stiles was cursing himself for this terrible, terrible idea and trying to force his erection to go down through sheer will. He risked a glance over his shoulder and saw Derek standing by the projector, silhouetted so that his face was hidden and looking as comfortable on his feet as if he had been lying down on a feather bed.

The last movie ended and Derek turned the lights on again as conversation began to bubble up amongst the collected betas. Jackson was bitching about how the effects looked fake and Isaac was saying that he was crazy and they looked awesome and were better than any CGI shit, while Erica wondered aloud if Jenny Agutter's character was going to turn into a werewolf, since according to the first movie it could be passed on through unprotected sex. Stiles clenched his jaw at the mention of sex and subtly shoved a hand into his jeans pocket to rearrange his current problem into something that wouldn't be so obvious.

The werewolves picked themselves up from their various resting places and, without any argument or coercion, began clearing up the scattered popcorn and drink cans whilst continuing to chatter amongst themselves. As Stiles joined them, he reflected somewhat smugly on the fact that he'd been completely right: the pack wanted to be together, they naturally fit well together as a group, and all they'd needed was a small nudge in the right direction.

They even seemed to reluctant to part ways as most of them headed back to their respective homes. Isaac, who had grown incredibly from the shy and slightly awkward boy he had once been, hugged both Boyd and Erica enthusiastically as they said goodbye. He even reached out to Jackson, who instead opted to slap Isaac on the back in a bro-y way and walk out of the door looking slightly confused.

Stiles, who wasn't shy about such things and whose erection had finally subsided, pounced on Isaac and hugged him with comical enthusiasm unti they both ended up toppling over onto the floor. Stiles breathed Isaac's scent deeply and immediately felt his jittery nerves calmed and soothed by it. It lacked the heady, throbbing, addictive nature of Derek's Alpha musk but Isaac still smelt weirdly like home. He and Stiles hadn't even known each other much until recently, but now it felt as though there were the beginnings of a brotherly bond between them.

'You want to crash here?' Isaac asked, helping Stiles to his feet again. He glanced over his shoulder. Derek was apparently still upstairs, having declined to take part in the goodbye ritual. When Isaac was satisfied that they were alone he said, in a low voice, 'I know this whole thing was your idea, and it's really great what you're doing for Derek. He pretty much saved my life, Stiles, and I'm glad he has someone around who's...' Isaac paused, then laughed before admitting, 'Who's willing to tell him the truth.'

* * *

Isaac watched Stiles head out to his Jeep, then shoved his hands until his pockets and headed back upstairs to the large open space that Derek had converted into a living area. There weren't a lot of walls diving it up and the two of them were effectively roommates, but it didn't feel like a lack of privacy. It was certainly a hell of a lot better for Isaac than living with his dad.

His stomach twisted in involuntary fear at the thought of him. After Derek had turned him, he'd told the werewolf in stops and starts and stutters about his home life and about the punishments. Derek had stared at him, apparently impassive, while Isaac had talked, but the Alpha's knuckles had whitened as he clenched his fists tighter and tighter, and Isaac had seen the glow of red in his eyes. When he was finished, Derek had told Isaac in no uncertain terms that he wasn't going to go back to his father's house, and Isaac had been happy to agree.

It might not seem like his new situation was much better than the old one. After all, he was still living with a pretty overbearing person and Derek could be incredibly cold and distant. With his Alpha, though, Isaac had found a safety that he'd never had with his father, and he knew that despite Derek's impassive mask, this was a person who would go to hell and back in order to protect him.

Derek was furiously doing pull-ups in the gym he'd set up in a corner of the apartment, his face fierce with concentration as the muscles in his arms flexed and shifted. Isaac busied himself with making a mug of herbal tea - one of the luxuries he'd discovered since moving into the den. Isaac's father had arbitrarily banned tea from the house when he found out that Isaac liked it, and the burnt-out Hale house hadn't exactly been set up with working electricity.

'This was fun,' Isaac said between breathing coolly onto the steaming liquid. 'We should go running or something next time, though. It's been too long since we were out in the woods. I kinda miss it.'

Derek grunted by way of response and dropped to the ground with silent grace before walking over to the kitchen area and grabbing some bottled water out of the fridge. The close proximity to his Alpha filled Isaac with a weird combination of overwhelming contentment and slight nervousness, but if Stiles could talk back then he was allowed to as well, right?

'I'm glad you and Stiles sorted things out,' he said boldly. 'We all kind of feel it when you guys fight.'

Derek looked at him in surprise, spilling a little water over his chin. He cleared his throat and then said, in a slightly gruff voice, 'Thanks.'

Isaac nodded. Still feeling in the mood to talk directly he went on, trying to sound casual, 'He can stay over if you want. I mean, it's no big deal.'

Derek suddenly stilled. 'Why would it be?' he asked, in a tone that suggested he knew exactly what Isaac meant.

'Come on, Derek, I mean... The way you two act around each other, the way you look at him when he can't see you... I'm just saying that you shouldn't worry about anything on my account. We can arrange a sock-on-the-doorknob code if you...'

'You think I'm sleeping with Stiles,' Derek asked with an incredulousness that was a little too sharp. Isaac backtracked hastily.

'No, not at all. I'm just saying that if you did...'

'We won't,' Derek said, his tone clipped.

'Oh.'

There was a short silence, during which Derek scowled at his feet. Finally he said in a low voice, 'I'll talk to him. If it's disruptive to the pack then he needs to cut it out.' He said it as though Stiles had been clipping his toenails in front of them.

'Cut what out?' Isaac asked, emboldened now. 'I'm pretty sure it's not voluntary. He certainly doesn't look happy.'

'He'll get over it.'

'Will you?'

Isaac realised that he'd gone too far about a second too late. He heard the growl rumble threateningly in Derek's throat and immediately felt his nervous system seize in response. He shrank away, hunching over his tea and mumbling, 'Sorry, sorry, sorry...'

It was instinct. It wasn't all werewolf instinct.

After a second or two Derek seemed to get hold of himself. He put the bottle of water back in the fridge and stalked over to Isaac in a manner that suggested he was at least trying not to act too threatening.

'I'm going to bed,' he said, but before he did so he gripped Isaac's shoulder for a moment in reassurance, and Isaac felt himself relax a little. For a moment he considered pursuing the previous line of inquiry, but then he thought better of it. This was one raw nerve that was best left untouched.

* * *

A few days later, the pack was sharing a cafeteria table at school. Stiles had felt a little bad about it at first, since Scott was wary of hanging out too much with a pack that he didn't belong to, but it turned outt that Stiles' best friend in the world could handle being without him for half an hour every day if it meant more alone time with Allison. Besides, Stiles had explained to him the value of sharing meals with his fellow betas and Scott had been pretty understanding, if a little sceptical.

Being with the pack usually helped Stiles to relax a little, but today the close proximity to the concentrated aura of wolfishness was making him feel jittery and itchy under his skin. 'I'm crawling up the walls here,' he said in a low voice, glancing over his shoulder. 'You guys want to go for a run after school?'

Erica, who was curled up against Boyd's side, smirked knowingly. 'Are you sure it's a run you're looking for?'

Stiles rolled his eyes. Being in a pack had its downsides, and the lack of privacy was definitely one of them. 'Are you in or not?'

'I'm in,' Isaac said quickly. He looked suddenly embarrassed by his own enthusiasm and added, 'Uh, I'm feeling kind of antsy anyway.'

'I'm down,' Erica said, glancing over at Boyd and smiling at his affirming nod.

'Cool,' Stiles said, pleased with himself for organising another bonding experience so easily.

Not everyone in the pack was sitting at their table, however, and Stiles didn't want to do things by half-measures. He glanced over his shoulder and caught sight of Jackson sitting with a group of the lacrosse jocks on the other side of the hall. 'Hey, Jackson,' Stiles said quietly.

Jackson lifted his head sharply and cast his eyes around the hall until he found Stiles and fixed him with an irritated glare.

'We're going for a run in the woods later. Gotta burn off some of that wolfy energy. Wanna join us?' He made the request as off-handedly as he could manage; make it sound too much like a challenge and Jackson would only get defensive.

The muscles in Jackson's jaw tightened briefly, and then he gave a brief jerk of his head that looked like a nod before clocking each of his friends to make sure that they hadn't noticed.

'Awesome,' Stiles said, surprised to realise that he was actually pleased by the idea of Jackson joining them. 'We'll meet up at Derek's old place, so you don't cramp my style in school.'

The betas recruited, Stiles pulled out his phone to text Derek, feeling suddenly and weirdly shy about it, as though he was asking the Alpha out on a date. He sent a message that emphasised the group nature of the outing and shoved his phone back into his pocket, his heartrate becoming jittery and nervous.

Which, of course,wasn't something that he could keep a secret in his current company. Stiles looked up and saw Boyd trying to hide a knowing smirk as Isaac took a sudden and immediate interest in finishing off his hamburger.

'Oh shut up,' Stiles snapped, without much venom. 'You all suck.'

* * *

Jackson actually did show up at the Hale house, and although he tried to put up a pretense of being too good for it all, it was obvious that he'd been dying to get out in the fresh hair and really let loose.

Then again, the air wasn't actually all that fresh. As Stiles had approached the woods he had enjoyed the heady scent of bark and mud and grass and small scurrying animals, but as he got further into the trees an unappealing new smell began threading its way into the familiar. He could smell it now, even over the sweat and blood that was soaked into the pack's old training ground, and he wrinkled his nose.

'You guys smell that?' he asked.

'Smell what?' Boyd returned.

'Like, I dunno. Something kind of funky.'

'I always smell that when you're around, Stilinski,' Jackson shot at him.

Stiles rolled his eyes. 'We both know that's not true, Jackson. Now that we're wolf brothers I smell as sweet as apple pie to you.'

'I think I smell something too,' Erica volunteered, frowning. 'What is that?'

They searched the property for a couple of minutes, trying to figure out if something had died on the premises, but didn't make too much of an effort. They were impatient to get moving.

'Is Derek gonna show up?' Boyd inquired.

'Huh.' Derek had sent a text back about half an hour ago that simply said, " _Can't. Busy_." 'No, his majesty won't be gracing us with his presence on this particular excursion.'

Stiles felt like kicking himself as soon as he said it. He was supposed to be helping Derek bond with the pack, not badmouthing him behind his back. He couldn't let what had happened between them affect that, especially since nothing actually _had_ happened between them.

'I mean, uh, he's doing... important Alpha stuff...'

'Are we doing this or not?' Jackson barked, and Stiles had never been so happy to be interrupted by the arrogant ass.

They took off into the woods, first on two legs before relaxing and dropping down to all fours, speeding up considerably as they did so. The further away from the town they got, the more uneven the ground was, but the pack navigated the huge rocks and fallen tree trunks as easily as if they'd been running across the flat surface of the lacrosse pitch. Stiles could smell prey nearby and it was maddeningly tempting, but he resisted the urge to chase down a rabbit. He still had some dignity, after all.

Out of the corner of his eye he saw Erica bump into Boyd teasingly, and in response he jumped over her and caught her offguard with a headbutt to the shoulder. She let out a laugh that sounded like a yelp and tackled him so hard that they both went tumbling over into the dead leaves.

Over to his right, Jackson was running with an expression of fierce concentration on his face, made all the more intimidating by the fact that he had wolfed out. And up ahead... just up ahead, Isaac had stopped and was standing bolt upright.

Stiles stuttered to a halt next to Isaac and straightened up, smelling the fear and tension radiating off him. 'What?' he asked urgently. 'What...?'

He caught the sharp stink of it just as Isaac growled, 'Another pack. There's another pack here.'

Stiles heard them before he saw them. Bare feet crunching over the ground, heavy breaths in chests that had been heaving not too long ago. Stiles had long since grown used to Scott smelling slightly strange, but these werewolves were alien to him and the stench of them had his wolf raising its hackles and his claws itching to come out.

In his peripheral vision he saw Jackson join him on his right flank and Erica and Boyd emerging on his left. They were unsettled; Jackson was actually whining uncertainly and a little aggressively under his breath.

'Play it cool,' Stiles muttered to them, realising as he did so that he was at the centre and front of their little formation. 'Let's see what they want.'

'Trouble,' Boyd said in a low growl.

'We don't know that. We...'

The new werewolf pack emerged from the trees. Three, no... four, five... eight of them. Nine. Walking at the head of the pack was a woman with dark hair cropped very close to her head and a small black tattoo curving around her left eye. She was wearing a sleeveless button-down shirt, and Stiles could see the tightly corded muscles in her arms. She was taller than him, and she was very obviously an Alpha. He didn't need to see red in her eyes to figure that out.

The betas definitely weren't high school students. No, these were adults, ranging from their late twenties to one guy who had to be at least fifty, going by his grizzled grey beard. They looked like the kind of gang who would hang out in the bad part of Beacon Hills, with their tattoos and scruffy hairstyles. There was about an even mix of men and women and only one of them - an enormous brute with a shaved dome - was wolfed out. The rest were simply wearing dangerous smiles.

'Hello,' the Alpha said, in the kind of voice most people used when finding a ten dollar bill in an old coat. 'This is a pleasant surprise. Five betas running around Beacon Hills Preserve.' She looked Stiles up and down appraisingly, taking a few steps closer to him. 'What's your name?'

'You go first,' Stiles said in a cool tone.

The Alpha raised her eyebrows and then laughed huskily. 'You're a brave little pup, aren't you? I'm Lisa. This is the O'Reilly pack. And you are?'

'Stiles.'

'This is the old Hale territory, Stiles. Did you know that? Are you lost?'

Stiles felt the temptation to wolf out again at her condescending tone, but instead he held her gaze and replied stiffly, 'Not lost. We're part of the Hale pack.'

The O'Reillys exchanged a few glances at that, some of them looking confused and others smirking in a way that Stiles didn't like at all. Lisa raised her eyebrows again.

'Really? You don't look like Hales. Don't smell like them either. And the last time we heard, all the Hales were dead.'

'So you're trying to move in on our patch?' Jackson cut in sharply. Stiles could feel the outrage pouring off him. 'You heard wrong. Leave.'

'Woah, hold on now,' Stile said as the enormous wolfed out dude let out a growl and took a very threatening step towards Jackson, who swallowed hard and stepped back. 'No need for hostility here, it's just a misunderstanding.'

'I don't think so,' Lisa said, speaking too him in patient, motherly tones. 'Laura Hale is dead and the uncle - the vegetable - we heard that he just passed away as well. A tragedy, but it means that Beacon Hills is vacant and we're... well, we're looking for somewhere to settle down.'

As little as he wanted to, Stiles took another step towards her, so that they were an arm's length away. He heard the rest of the O'Reilly pack bristle and knew that they would be able to hear his heart pounding away manically, but he did his best to look calm. If Derek couldn't be here to defend his territory then it was up to Stiles to do it for him. Now all he had to do was avoid screwing it up and making the situation worse.

'Derek Hale is still alive,' he explained. 'He's our Alpha. Sorry, you heard wrong. Beacon Hills is occupied.'

'Oh?' Lisa cocked her head to one side. 'It's a lot of territory for such a small pack. Couldn't we share?'

'I...' Stiles hesitated. He had felt his inner wolf snarl at the suggestion, but was this something that werewolves did? Was it customary to share territory when one pack was in need and the other had more space than they really required? Derek had never said anything either way - he had mostly only taught them how to fight. 'I'd have to ask Derek.'

'And where is your Alpha, sweetie?' Lisa said, as though talking to a toddler who was wandering the aisles of a grocery store on their own. Now Stiles was certain that her niceness was just an act.

'He's... not here. I can take a message if you'd like.' In retaliation, Stiles had apparently adopted the persona of a cock-blocking receptionist.

'Not here? Well, that's strange.' Lisa's eyes suddenly burned red. 'You know, in the O'Reilly pack, no wolf ever runs alone.'

Stiles swallowed hard. 'That sounds... stifling. Wow, I'm sure you guys like that, but me? I like my personal space. I'll tell Derek, though.' Crap, that sounded like a threat. 'I mean, I'll tell him you're in town. Maybe we can, uh, grab a beer or something.'

He retreated back into the fold of the pack, ignoring Isaac's worried glances from next to him. Lisa closed in on him again.

'No need to delay anything,' she purred dangerously. 'How about you take me to Derek now, Stiles?'

She was pushing. She knew exactly what she was doing. This was a test and if Stiles failed it then he would fail his whole pack.

'No,' he said firmly. 'We'll come and find you. Until then, you probably shouldn't get too comfortable.'

The tension in the air was so thick that the entire forest seemed to go still with it. Both packs held themselves stiff and prepared for anything as Lisa's expression froze in an inscrutable mask. After what felt like entire minutes had passed, she smiled.

'You're a good talker, Stiles,' she said in a soft, profoundly dangerous way. 'I don't like talking so much. I prefer a good clean fight.'

'If that's what you want...' Erica burst out suddenly, but she stopped abruptly and Stiles suspected that Boyd had silently signaled to her that she should leave this up to Stiles.

There was actual, honest-to-god cold sweat pearling on his back, but Stiles lifted his chin and held Lisa's gaze. 'Was there anything else?' he asked.

The Alpha bared her teeth in a smile. She moved too fast for Stiles to do anything, to even try and stop her, and for a moment he didn't even realise what she had done. Then he heard Isaac let out a horrified gasp before letting loose with a full-throated howl: a desperate signal to Derek.

There was blood on Lisa's claws, which were extended and as dark as they were sharp. Her eyes were the same colour as her hands as she held one up so that Stiles could see it. At that point the pain caught up to him and he pressed one hand to his stomach protectively, feeling the tattered remains of his shirt and the tattered flesh underneath. She had sliced his belly open in one stroke.

'That's my message,' she said, as though she had just handed him a note. A smile still curved up the corners of her mouth. 'Be sure to pass it on to Derek, won't you?'

All of the betas were howling now and it was Boyd who caught Stiles as he fell, gently lowering him to the ground before stripping off his shirt and pressing it onto Stiles' stomach with his big hands, trying to stop the bleeding. The wounds felt wrong. They _burned_. Stiles was growing weaker, his vision blurring as he watched the other pack disappear into the trees once more.

He tried to speak, to add his voice to the call for Derek, but the shift of his diaphragm made it felt like his intestines were about to burst out through the deep cuts and so instead he just closed his eyes and cursed himself bitterly for having failed.


	21. Chapter 21

_Hey Mr Alpha Boss sir. Your loyal pack has gone stir-crazy in class and we're going to do some voluntary exercise after school. You in?_

Derek frowned as he read the message and hovered a thumb over the screen of his phone. If he turned Stiles down then he would probably end up thinking that Derek no longer liked him (a painfully long way from the truth), and Derek couldn't deny that he was feeling stressed out and in need of a good romp in the woods. It would be a good opportunity to bond with his pack, after all. He quickly tapped out a reply.

_OK, yes. I'll come and find you later on._

He didn't send it right away. Instead, Derek stared at the words and wondered if they were too formal, or too casual. Were they too friendly, or too cold? Should he let Stiles tell him the time and place to meet up or was it OK to just use his instincts and senses to find the pack? Should he make some kind of joke, or would that be too much?

Before he could make a decision, the phone started ringing in his hand. An unknown number. Derek paused for a moment and then, figuring it would give him time to think over his text, answered the call.

'Hello?'

'Derek? This is Doctor Deaton. Scott's boss, at the veterinary clinic.'

Derek remembered Deaton quite clearly. When you knock someone out and kidnap them, it's only polite to spare a place in your immediate memory for them.

'What is it?' Derek asked bluntly.

'There is... I don't want to alarm you, Derek, but you may have a serious problem. I need you to come to the clinic.'

'Now?' Derek held the phone away from his ear for a moment to glance at the time. 'How long will it take?'

'Not now. Stop by after 5, once we've closed. But I'd clear your schedule, Derek. This is important.'

The audio quality down the phone line wasn't sharp enough for Derek to hear Deaton's heartbeat, but there was no mistaking the sincerity and urgency in his voice. Derek didn't know much about the veterinarian, but he was pretty certain that the man knew about werewolves and possibly about other things that even Derek hadn't heard off. This wasn't advice that he could just turn away from.

'Fine. I'll be there soon.'

Derek hung up and quickly deleted the message he'd written to Stiles and dashed off a decline instead, deciding that he could go running with the pack another time.

* * *

Deaton opened the door a split second before Derek knocked on it, and Derek sniffed the man suspiciously for any hints that his good hearing might be down to werewolf hearing. Instead there was merely a strong cocktail of herbs, chemicals and minerals hanging around him - even wolfsbane, hidden in amongst the layers.

'Thank you for coming in on such short notice,' Deaton said politely, as though Derek was there to pick up a pet hamster. He found himself being ushered inside and then into the surgery, where both humans and animals had been patched up by Deaton in the past.

Derek leaned back on the metal table and eyed Deaton coolly. 'What's this about?' he asked.

Deaton hesitated for a moment, his soft yet strangely piercing eyes looking Derek up and down for a moment. Finally, he settled upon asking, 'Did your mother ever tell you about me, Derek?'

Like an allergic reaction, Derek actually felt his body seize up a little at the mere mention of his mother. Resisting the urge to bare his fangs in warning, he bit out, 'No. What should she have told me?'

Deaton nodded thoughtfully. 'I was the emissary for your mother's pack,' he explained gently. 'I... advised her on matters...'

'I know what an emissary is,' Derek interrupted, trying to keep the edge out of his voice. 'She never told me about you.'

'You were very young when she died,' Deaton said by way of explanation, a sadness coming over his expression as he said the words. 'I'm sure we would have met, in time.'

'It was only a few years ago,' Derek retorted. 'I wasn't that young.'

'You were too young,' Deaton replied ambiguously. Taking a step closer to Derek, he said, 'I've been keeping an eye on you, Derek. You and your pack. I had planned to wait before introducing myself properly and offering you my expertise, but recent events have robbed me of the luxury of time.'

'Do you always talk in riddles?' Derek asked roughly. 'You asked me here for something specific, so just come out with it.'

Deaton didn't appear to be offended by his tone. He looked Derek steadily and sincerely in the eyes and said, 'Another pack is moving in on Beacon Hills. They plan to take your territory.'

For a moment, Derek was too overcome by a blast of shock, dread and denial to formulate a proper response. When he finally spoke, all the could manage was, 'What?'

'They are already here, Derek. They're camped out on the edge of the preserve, but they will make their move soon if they haven't already. I don't know who they are or how much they know, but there are a lot of them and they are _strong_.'

'Wait a minute...' Derek held up a hand. 'Did you say they're in the preserve?'

Before Deaton could reply, Derek heard it. His head snapped up sharply, pure instinct, as the first howl hit him like a blast of physical pain, followed by another and then another until it became a single, panicked chorus.

'What is it?' Deaton asked urgently, but Derek was already gone: storming out of the veterinary clinic and sprinting out to his car, the tires screeching as he pulled out of the parking lot with dangerous speed.

He knew a lot about pack howls, and what different intonations and pitches meant, and this one was pure terror. He also knew what each member of his pack sounded like, and he could hear Isaac's howl, and Boyd's, and Erica's and even Jackson's.

But Derek couldn't hear Stiles.

* * *

The forest floor was cool and dry and still, so it was distinctly unpleasant when it turned hot and damp in the space between seconds and Stiles found himself being shaken about all over the place. It hurt to protest, however, and so instead he just kept his eyes half-open and watched in admiration as green leaves blurred into blue sky, and then into the inside of a car, and then changed again into a greyish ceiling. It all seemed to happen at once and possibly in the wrong order, and in between it there were flashes of words.

'Blood.'

'Bleeding.'

'Too much blood.'

'Stiles.'

' _Stiles_.'

'Stiles?'

'...happened. _What happened?_ '

'Sorry.'

'Dying?'

'Healing?'

' _Stiles_.'

* * *

Things were dark for a while. Then there was something pricking at Stiles' belly, and he tried to wriggle away from it but was held down by strong hands. Someone slipped something in between his teeth and he bit down on it instinctively. Leather. Why?

Pain. There was more pain, even around the massive slices of pain that he had been doing a very good job of blocking out so far. Stiles groaned around the leather and tried to thrash, but he was held down too firmly and he felt weaker than he had ever felt, weaker even than when he had been human.

In front of his eyes was a drunken haze of vaguely familiar faces, but all that Stiles could smell was blood, _his_ blood, flooding everything and making him feel sick, making his stomach churn under the needle.

Then... hands framing his face. A scent far more overpowering than the blood: a scent so thick that it lay heavy on Stiles' brain and relaxed his muscles. The leather strap was removed from his mouth, and then there were hands framing his head and hovering over him now was a face that he would never forget.

'Look at me, Stiles,' Derek was saying, quickly and fervently. 'You're going to be OK. I promise. I _promise_ you. Can you hear me, Stiles?'

Stiles could feel the pain slowly draining out of him, Derek's fingers pulling it away from where it was burrowing up through his nervous system and into his brain, and Stiles suddenly felt a strong urge to fall asleep. He moved his lips but had no idea if any sound was coming out.

Somewhere, a long way away, there was a needle going in and out of Stiles' stomach. But up here there was only the smell of Derek, and his hands, and his worried face, and Stiles thought that if he was going to die then he wouldn't mind too much if it happened like this.

'OK, I've done what I can,' Stiles heard Deaton say. 'I won't lie to you, Derek. This is a terrible wound, and there's no telling how long it will take to heal. Alpha-inflicted injuries are complicated and it depends on the beta...'

'Stiles is strong,' Derek interrupted firmly. He straightened up and Stiles whined in protest at the loss, but Derek kept one hand resting gently on Stiles' forehead and it was like an anchor. 'He'll live.'

'Yes, I think so. He'll need plenty of rest, though, and the pack...'

'We'll stay.' That was Isaac. Stiles couldn't see him, and was too exhausted to turn his head.

'Thank you. The more of his pack he has around him, the faster he'll heal. He needs to stay here as well, in the den.' Stiles could hear Deaton rifling through his medical bag and then sighing. 'I need some supplies from my car. Keep an eye on him, I'll be back as soon as I can.' His footsteps faded away.

'I'll text his dad,' Erica said.

A spike of panic shot through Stiles, jolting him into alertness. ' _No!'_ he rasped weakly.

'It's OK, sweetie,' Erica reassured him quickly. 'I'll use your phone, tell him we're having a sleepover, or a pack bonding session or something.'

'The Sheriff has a right to know,' Derek said, not taking his eyes off Stiles.

Erica snorted. 'Derek, you might know wolves but you don't know teenagers. The less parents know, the better. Besides, in a couple of days Stiles will fine and there'll be nothing to know,' she said firmly.

'Derek,' Stiles muttered. 'Please?'

The Alpha sighed heavily, his brow furrowed with frown lines, but after a moment or two he nodded and Erica began picking through Stiles' discarded jacket to find his phone. As she did so, Derek suddenly stiffened and stood up straight, taking his hand off of Stiles temporarily as he looked around. 'There's someone coming,' he said. 'Fast... too fast for a human.'

The pack collectively steeled themselves for a fight, but Stiles could see the fear in their eyes. They'd already witnessed him being torn apart by the other Alpha and the O'Reilly pack far outnumbered them.

Stiles could hear the approaching werewolf now as well, even as weak as he was, and even before the hammering on the front foor of the den began he groaned in relief. 'It's Scott,' he said, his voice a shaking whisper now. 'Let him in.'

For a moment it looked like Derek was about to object, but then he nodded stiffly at Jackson, who looked like he was about to argue before quickly thinking better of it. He walked down the stairs with deliberate sedateness, however, apparently determined to let Scott sweat a little.

Finally the door was unlocked and Stiles actually heard Scott crash through it, ignoring Jackson's yell of indignation. Stiles made a considerate effort to look less dead as Scott came charging up the stairs, but his attempt to sit up was quickly aborted by the burst of pain in his abdomen and Derek's hand slamming down firmly on his shoulder.

'Where is he?' Scott was demanding, angry and frantic. 'Where is...?' He stopped at the sight of Stiles lying on the bed and his eyes widened as he took in the long cuts that had been deep enough to expose Stiles' guts to the open air. He could vaguely remember someone keeping one hand on them to hold them in as he was carried back from the preserve.

'M'okay, Scott,' Stiles tried to assure him, unconvincingly. 'Jus' need a little while to mend.'

'I heard the pack howling,' Scott said, hurrying over to the bedside and bumping Derek out of the way as he dropped down next to Stiles and laid a hand on his forearm. 'You're cold, man.'

'Tryin' to heal,' Stiles said. He felt a little better with Scott present; he might not be in the pack but you can't just cancel out years of friendship with one little bite. Scott felt as much like home as any of the others.

Deaton returned, and Stiles let his head loll over to one side so that he could see him. He was holding a kit that involved rubber tubing and needles and looked frankly quite terrifying, but he smiled in reassurance.

'You've lost a lot of blood, Stiles,' he said. 'And with a wound like this your body isn't going to be able to replenish it fast enough. Do you know your blood type?'

Stiles was too fuzzy-headed to respond, but he heard Scott and Derek say simultaneously, 'O positive.'

The two of them stared at each other for a moment.

'I took him to the hospital when he broke his arm,' Scott said. 'I peeked at his chart.'

'I've tasted his blood,' Derek said shortly. As Stiles tried not to be incredibly grossed out by that fact, he realised that Derek was already rolling his sleeve up.

'What're you doing?' he mumbled.

'O positive,' Derek repeated, speaking mostly to Deaton. 'You want to do a blood transfusion but you don't have any blood packs with you.' Without waiting for confirmation, he grabbed a hard wooden chair from its place next to the table and carried it over to the bed, setting it down as Deaton began setting up the equipment.

Stiles tried to protest. 'Derek, don't... the other pack... you need your strength...'

'I will deal with the other pack,' Derek interrupted grimly as he set down and began opening and closing his fist. 'Trust me, Stiles, they aren't going to get away with this. But I am not leaving this building until you're on your feet again. None of us are,' he added loudly, flaring around at the rest of the pack.

'Screw that!' Jackson protested in anger, folding his arms. 'You can't force me to stay just to babysit his ass...'

'It's your ass I'm worried about, Jackson,' Derek said with a comically straight face. 'They're trying to pick off weaker members of the pack...' Jackson bristled even more, but Derek pressed on. '...That means any beta caught out alone is a target. I don't want to have to find you... like I found Stiles. So you're staying. End of story.'

Deaton cleared his throat and wrapped a tourniquet around Derek's arm. The Alpha held out his arm obediently as the veterinarian tapped the crook of his elbow, searching for a vein, but as he slid the needle in Stiles could hear Derek's heartbeat racing as he fought to keep his wolf from lashing out against the small injury.

It was Stiles' turn next, but he didn't even feel the needle go into his arm. He only realised it had happened when an incredibly warmth began spreading through his veins, heating him up in places that he hadn't even realised were freezing. If the smell of Derek was addictive then the sensation of having the Alpha's blood inside Stiles' veins was utterly euphoric.

'Mmmm,' he moaned, too tired to be embarrassed by the sound.

'That feel better?' Derek asked in a low voice.

'Dude, your blood is awesome,' Stiles said, though the last word came out as "ossum."

Scott squeezed his arm. 'Try to get some rest, Stiles. We're all here for you.'

Derek said something as well, but Stiles was already nearing unconsciousness. Before, in the woods, it had felt like something cold and nasty trying to drag him into the waters of a stagnant pond, but now it felt as easy and as pleasant as slipping into a warm bath. With the scent and sound of his pack around him, Stiles slept.


	22. Chapter 22

The pain woke him up, in the early hours of the morning, and Stiles looked down at his stomach to find that his wounds were still there, looking marginally better than they had the night before but still deep and ugly. He had been a werewolf for long enough that he'd started to take the impermanence of injuries for granted, and Stiles scowled down at his body as though it was deliberately heaaling slowly just to spite him.

The blood transfusion kit had been packed away at some point and the hard wooden chair that Derek had been sitting on was empty. Without even looking, however, Stiles could hear Derek sleeping on the floor next to him. He was very tempted to cough loudly and wake Derek up for a dose of magic painkiller, but somehow he was embarrassed to actually ask for it.

Stiles only had to suffer in silence for a few minutes, though. As his pain increased, he heard Derek stirring and then suddenly wake up with a jolt. A moment later his scruffy dark hair appeared over the side of the bed and, blinking sleep out of his eyes, he laid a hand on Stiles' bare stomach. Stiles watched as black veins appeared on Derek's hand like tattoos, shifting as they drew the pain out of him.

'Thanks,' he whispered.

'Mmm,' was Derek's mumbled reply. Without taking his hand off Stiles, he folded his spare arm on the bed and rested his head on it, closing his eyes again. For a moment it looked as though he had fallen asleep again, and Stiles was starting to drift off with him when he heard, quietly, 'I thought you were dead.'

Stiles opened his eyes and blinked slowly at Derek, wondering if he had imagined the words. 'What?' he whispered.

Derek's gaze remained firmly fixed on his hand laid over Stiles' stomach as he continued. 'I could hear the pack. I could hear how frightened they were. I know what wolves sound like when... and I couldn't hear you.'

Stiles didn't know what to say. He wasn't sure whether this was some kind of accusation, but just in case he apologised. 'Sorry. I tried, but my guts were making a break for freedom and I didn't want to encourage them.'

Derek winced almost imperceptibly. 'I know how easily people can die. One minute they're there and the next... gone. I'm scared, Stiles.' The confession was barely audible. 'I'm scared of losing you. I'm scared of losing the pack. I'm scared that they're going to die and I'm not going to be able to do anything to stop it. I'm scared that I've made all the wrong choices.'

The raw honesty in Derek's voice was more than Stiles could take, and with great effort he lifted one hand from the side of the bed and laid it over Derek's, feeling the contrast between the heated backs of Derek's fingers and his own cool, broken skin.

'Stop it,' he instructed in a fervent whisper. 'I didn't die. None of us did.'

Derek was silent for a moment. He moved his little finger ever so slightly, just enough to hook it over Stiles' in an oddly comforting gesture. His Adam's apple convulsed a few times, as though he wanted to say something else, but he had already said far more than he was usually comfortable with.

Stiles waited for Derek to speak again, figuring that it was only fair to give him a little time. After a while, though, he sank back into sleep, and so he never found out if Derek had said anything else.

* * *

_'So, how was your sleepover?'_

Stiles winced at the guarded tone of his father's voice and the scepticism he could hear even over the phone. He pulled his shirt down over the marks on his stomach as he replied, in as casual a voice as he could muster, 'It was fun, Dad. We all did hardcore drugs and then ran around trashing cars.'

_'Hilarious. Any reason why you didn't answer your phone the last five times I called?'_

"Because I was concentrating on not dying," didn't seem like the right response, so instead Stiles went with, 'Left my phone on silent. We were watching movies, I didn't want to be That Guy, you know?'

A long-suffering sigh came down the phone as Erica came wandering up the stairs carrying a tray. Her eyes widened when she saw Stiles standing upright and fully dressed, and she balanced the tray easily on one hand as she pointed at the bed with what Stiles felt was an unnecessary amount of aggression.

 _'Just make sure you're back by nine tonight,'_ John continued down the line, luckily ignorant of the many unladylike things that Erica was mouthing at Stiles. _'You have school tomorrow.'_

'School. Sure. Yeah. Gotcha. Teachers. Homework. Bye, Dad.' Stiles hung up the phone hurriedly, and Erica took the opportunity to add sound to her diatribe.

'You nearly got ripped in half yesterday and now you're wandering around out of bed? What are you _thinking_ , Stiles?' she demanded.

'I'm thinking that lying on my back has gotten really old,' he retorted, eyeing up the tray with interest. 'Is that bacon for me?'

She huffed. 'No, this was for the invalid, but apparently he's feeling better now and he doesn't need breakfast in bed.'

Stiles was tempted to dart forward and grab the food, but was scared of tearing open his still-healing cuts. Instead he made puppy-dog eyes at Erica until she sighed and handed him the tray. It was piled high with a delicious-looking greasy breakfast. Stiles carried it over to the bed and set it down, sitting next to it as he grabbed a syrup-drizzled pancake and began eating it with his bare hands.

'Nice table manners,' Erica commented drily, but she sounded amused.

'I'm not at a table,' Stiles pointed out, his cheeks stuffed with food.

'How are you feeling?' she asked, her voice more gentle now as she looked him over critically.

Stiles swallowed his mouthful of food carefully and then shrugged. 'Better. I'll live.'

'It's scary, isn't it?' She chewed her lip. 'This must be why Derek never really clawed us during training.'

'It's good,' Stiles said firmly. 'Reminds us we're still vulnerable. It's easy to forget, sometimes.'

Erica's posture was tense as she said, 'I'm sick of being vulnerable. I thought that part of my life was over.'

Stiles tried to look sympathetic, but felt that the syrup on his chin was detracting from the effect a little. He picked up a slice of toast and took small, neat bites out of it as he asked, 'Everyone still under house arrest?'

Erica nodded. 'They're downstairs. Derek is giving some more combat tips. He's being gentle,' she finished hastily.

'And the other pack, they haven't...?'

'No. I think Derek wants to go after them, though.'

'What?' Stiles yelped, his appetite temporarily forgotten. 'That's crazy!'

'You didn't see his face when he found you, Stiles. When we told him what happened. He's really not thinking rationally right now.'

Stiles didn't miss the pleading tone in her voice. It seemed that he was the designated Derek whisperer of the betas, and that meant that he couldn't lounge around in bed any more. Bracing one hand on his stomach, he took a deep breath and stood up again. Erica was immediately by his side and he gratefully placed a hand on his shoulder as the two of them made their way over to the steps.

The first thing Stiles heard as he went downstairs was Jackson snapping: 'This is bullshit. We should track them down and rip their heads off.'

Said Isaac, quietly: 'There are too many of them, and they're all more experienced than us.'

Jackson rounded on the mousey-haired teen. 'You a chicken, Lahey?' he snarled.

'Knock it off,' Derek barked. Stiles hadn't even seen him at first. He was lurking in the corner of the room, doing his mysterious brooding thing but looking genuinely lost underneath it. He was wearing a long-sleeved red shirt with a few buttons on it that opened up the vee at his neck, and his hair didn't show any signs that he had slept in one of the most awkward positions known to man. It really wasn't fair. Stiles probably looked like complete crap.

It was while Stiles was ogling him, of course, that Derek decided to catch his eye. Stiles looked away hastily and he actually heard Derek tense up from across the room.

'What is he doing out of bed?' he snapped at Erica.

' _He_ is feeling much better and not enjoying being talked about in third person while he's in the room,' Stiles shot back, releasing Erica's shoulder as he walked a little stiffly over the the mismatched collection of chairs where the other betas were sitting and selected a puffy old armchair. There followed a short silence as everyone looked at him with a little trepidation, and he quickly grew sick of it. 'So, what's the plan?'

Derek, who still wasn't quite meeting Stiles' eyes, took a few steps over to them, scratching the back of his head in a way that unconsciously highlighted just how worried he was. 'We can't run,' he said firmly. 'This is our territory. But we're not strong enough to fight them off. There are only six wolves in this pack...'

'Seven,' Scott piped up immediately. He hesitated, then backtracked quickly, 'I mean, not permanently or anything. But if you guys need help then I'm there.' He grinned lopsidedly at Stiles, who winked back at him in gratitude.

'Thank you, Scott,' Derek said, a little stiffly. 'But that still leaves us outnumbered.'

'What about the Argents?' Stiles suggested. He'd been expecting the sudden tension in Derek's shoulders, and ploughed straight on. 'Yeah, yeah, I know, lots of baggage there. But if there's a pack of killer werewolves in town then we and the Argents have a common enemy. We haven't murdered anyone - not anyone innocent, anyway - but I'll bet dollars to donuts that the O'Reillys have. Either way, they're dicks,' he concluded.

Derek didn't dismiss the idea, but he didn't accept it either. Instead he simply remained silent for a moment and then finally met Stiles' gaze with a surprisingly intense stare. 'And your father?'

Stiles somehow manage to choke on nothing but air. 'What?' he sputtered.

'He needs to know what's going on, and you can bet that he won't be willing to just sit back and let you get chased out of town or ripped apart by a pack of wolves. He's a trained marksman, and he's smart. He could help.'

There was a sharp spike of fear in Stiles' chest. This situation was on his doorstep and it would end in either fight or flight but he couldn't even think about getting his father involved without visions of Lisa him open just as easily as she'd done to Stiles.

'You're afraid that he might get killed,' Derek stated softly, and just like that the conversation from last night - one that Stiles had almost discounted as a dream - rose up in his mind.

'Yeah,' Stiles admitted.

'But he's afraid for you, too. This is why we have packs, Stiles. So that we know there's always someone looking out for our loved ones.'

The air in the training room was still for a moment. It was Boyd who broke it, speaking for the first time since Stiles had joined them.

'So, we're going after them?' he said, a slightly savage edge to his voice.

'Oh, we're going after them,' Jackson snarled before Derek had a chance to reply.

Stiles glanced around, then looked back at Derek. He knew that his expression must have been pleading, but he had no idea what he wanted from Derek. He was lost, he needed...

'We're going after them,' Derek said at last, not breaking eye contact with Stiles.

The words were like a weight off his chest, and Stiles felt light and jittery. He took a deep breath, then set his jaw and nodded at Derek.

'Let's kick some ass.'


	23. Chapter 23

Everything was set, except for for the hardest part: explaining it to John. Stiles sat nervously in front of the TV, chewing his nail and not paying any attention to the show that was on. His father would be home soon and then... Stiles didn't know what would happen then. He was still considering keeping the whole thing a secret, though he knew that John would never forgive him if he found out that Stiles had effectively gone to war without telling him.

He was so lost in his thoughts that the sound of the doorbell actually made him jump. Stiles was on alert immediately, sniffing the air and wolfing out a little as he listened. Quickly, though, he recognised the sound and smell of Derek, and relaxed a little as he walked to the door.

Derek was standing on the porch. His car wasn't anywhere to be seen, so he must have come by foot. He looked distracted, even uncertain.

'What?' Stiles asked bluntly.

'Is your father home?'

'Come on, don't play dumb, you know he isn't. Are you checking up on me, Derek?'

'I...'

'Because I am going to tell him, so you can just skip on home...'

Derek growled, low and warning. 'You don't talk to me like that, Stiles.'

'Pretty sure I do,' Stiles retorted rashly. 'If you're not going to leave then come inside. You're letting all the cold air in.'

He stood aside and watched as Derek struggled to compose himself before stepping over the threshold. 'You shouldn't test me like that, Stiles,' he said, the warning sincere and agitated. 'Not now. I'm trying to be more... to do things your way, but I'm still an Alpha and challenging me is going to bring out certain... instincts.'

'So ignore them. You're not an animal,' Stiles said briskly, closing the door.

Derek bared his teeth in a grimace. 'You really are a pain in the ass, you know that?' he said, though he sounded more despairing than angry.

'Well maybe next time you should bite someone less annoying,' Stiles suggested.

Derek was quiet for a moment, standing with his hands in his pockets. 'Do you still hate me for it?' he asked. 'For biting you.'

Stiles snorted in what was probably a very unattractive way. 'Climb down off the cross, Derek, I never hated you. I was pissed off, and rightfully so.' He sighed. 'But I guess if you hadn't bitten me I'd still be fighting the O'Reillys with you anyway. I'd just wouldn't be as well-equipped.'

Derek eyed him suspiciously. 'You'd still help me? Even if you weren't in the pack?'

Stiles made a valiant attempt at a nonchalant shrug. 'Yeah, I've gotten used to your face. Besides, those guys are assholes.'

Derek nodded agreement, then stared at the floor for a moment and said, 'We might not both survive this fight tomorrow, Stiles. I don't want to... if this is the last chance I'm going to get then I don't want to miss it.'

He didn't elaborate, seemed to get stuck there, and suddenly Stiles felt kind of pissed off. 'You can't... don't say that to me, Derek. It's not fair. You know exactly how I feel and it's kind of dickish to say stuff like that when you don't...' Stiles was briefly interrupted by Derek's mouth on his. '... When you're not interested in...' But he was cut off by a small groan and by Derek brushing his upper lip over Stiles' lower one as he leaned forward into his space. 'You're _clearly_ not...' By this point Stiles was kissing Derek back, his body patiently waiting for his brain to catch up.

Derek took his hands out of his pockets and used one of them to cup the back of Stiles' head gently, to guide the kiss when Stiles got too enthusiastic and clumsy with it. It was around this point that Stules really grasped what was happening and he inhaled sharply, feeling the first sharp flutterings of panic.

Derek was kissing him. Right. Did that mean that Derek wanted to be kissing him, or was this part of a ploy? An elaborate practical joke? Was the whole pack in on it? It didn't feel like a practical joke but...

For a moment Derek stopped and breathed deeply, resting his forehead against Stiles', but he soon rocked the pressure of the hand behind Stiles' head to bring their mouths together once more. Stiles could feel the fingers of Derek's other hand tightening in his shirt, wrinkling the material.

Probably not a practical joke. Alright. OK. Stiles could deal with that. At least, he could deal with it at a deferred date when he wasn't distracted by the fact that he and Derek were now kissing with tongues and Derek's tongue was wet and warm and ever so slightly rough, and he was puffing out these short, warm little breaths whenever their lips parted, and the stubble around his mouth was scratchy in a nice way. Stiles wanted to press them closer together, but he knew that if he did so then his growing erection would make its presence known between them. He wanted to reach around and grab Derek's ass, but what if Derek wanted to retaliate by grabbing Stiles' ass - or lack thereof? Was Stiles' ass too flat for grabbing? Jesus Christ, why had he not thought to check at any point in his stupid teenage life so that now, when it mattered most, he would know whether or not he had a grabbable ass...

Derek was laughing. Derek was laughing _into_ Stiles' mouth and oh God, of course, of _course_ he was laughing. This was where the punchline came in and the stupid fantasy ended. Stiles pulled back and began trying extricate himself in as dignified a manner as he could manage.

'No, don't, I'm sorry,' Derek said in a rush. 'It's just... I could hear the cogs turning.' He tapped a finger against the back of Stiles' skull. 'In here.'

'Don't make fun of my cogs. They have a lot to deal with right now,' Stiles said defensively.

'Mmm. They're not the only ones.'

Derek and his stupid enigmatic statements. 'Are you kissing me on purpose?' Stiles demanded. 'Or is there some other reason that I'm just too stupid to figure out?'

'I'm not kissing you at all right now,' Derek pointed out, neatly dodging the question. 'It's kind of hard when you're talking a mile a minute.'

'People don't just spontaneously kiss me, Derek,' Stiles retorted accusingly.

'Good. I don't want anyone else to kiss you.'

' _Derek_.'

Derek huffed at him as though Stiles was the one being unreasonable, but he stroked a thumb absent-mindedly over Stiles' cheek and looked at him solemnly as he said, 'Don't overthink this. It's exactly what it feels like.'

'Really?' Stiles stammered. 'Because it feels like you're doing this voluntarily and... and...'

'I am. I want to. I want _you_ , Stiles.' Now it was Derek who seemed to be at a loss for words, frowning and looking annoyed at himself.

Stiles stared into Derek's face and afterwards would remember very clearly thinking, _screw it_. He moved forward, a little shyly, and kissed Derek again. It was small and hesitant and yet somehow Stiles didn't manage to mess it up, because Derek actually made a small noise of relief in his throat and then reached up to grip Stiles' biceps and maneuver him against the wall.

For a long yet indeterminate amount time they just kissed, and if anyone ever said that such a thing sounded boring Stiles would have been able to vehemently correct them. For once he just switched off his stupid brain and lost himself in the giddy excitement and intense joy of kissing Derek. They took it slow, exploring, occasionally stopping and resting their foreheads together and laughing a little and then carrying on.

Derek seemed... well, he was always hard to read, but he seemed to have given up on actively trying to hide himself away from Stiles. He kissed openly and honestly, with an occasional clumsiness that suggested he was out of practice, but that only made it better.

Then, quite suddenly, something happened that broke the happy, slow, drunken spell of it. Derek had his left hand halfway up Stiles' back, the right one smoothing over the small of it, and with a groan he pulled Stiles' hips forward and away from the wall and slid his right hand down the back of Stiles' jeans so that it was trapped between the denim and the thin material of his underwear.

Stiles nearly choked as he sucked in a huge gasp that was equal amounts shock and excitement. That - the way Derek's fingertips were digging hungrily into the muscle of his ass cheek underneath at least some of his clothes - was the most boldly sexual thing that anyone had ever done to Stiles and it suddenly brought everything crashing down on him in a hot and confusing wave. His belly was twisting madly with desire but at the same time his heart was racing in panic.

Stiles' hands been resting inoffensively on Derek's hips up until that point, but in a fit of confidence he slid his fingers a little way up the back of his shirt, feeling the skin tighten a little over the toned muscles as Derek tensed against the touch. Stiles could actually smell the arousal pouring off him and the air between them suddenly felt heated and urgent.

They were still in the _hall_.

'Um,' Stiles said, the first real syllable that either of them had uttered in what felt like ages. 'Do you want to take this upstairs?'

Derek seemed to hold his breath for a moment, then let it out in a shuddery staccato as he dropped his forehead onto Stiles shoulder, before turning it to push his nose and mouth against the side of his neck. 'That isn't what I meant,' he said, his face hidden from view. 'When I said I didn't want to miss my chance, I only meant that... I never...'

'I don't mind,' Stiles said hurriedly. 'I mean, I'm totally up for it.' The sentiment might have had something to do with with the fact that Derek was still palming the meat of his ass and the proximity of his touch to that area was making Stiles feel just about ready for anything.

Derek lifted his head again and stared critically into Stiles' face in a way that made him feel like a butterfly pinned to a board. Before he could come to a decision, though, he looked up and over Stiles shoulder sharply. It was an unfortunate image, but all Stiles could think of was a dog hearing the postman approaching.

'Shit,' Derek hissed, extricating his hand from inside Stiles' jeans and pulling away so suddenly that the absence of him actually hit Stiles like a physical blow.

'What...' he began, but then he heard it too. The very familiar rumble of an engine coming up the street. 'Oh crap. Uh...' He looked around wildly, trying to think of something they could have been doing instead of making out. 'Look, get in the kitchen, I'll make coffee or... something. We'll say you just got here.'

'I did just get here,' Derek pointed out with annoying calm, walking into the kitchen to take a seat at the table.

Stiles switched the kettle on and winced as he caught sight of his own flushed face in the shiny metal. Very attractive. And also a massive giveaway. His dad was parking the car already, and Stiles heard him turn off the engine as he grabbed three cups from the draining board next to the sink.

Trying to get his breathing and heartrate under control, Stiles leaned back against the counter and realised that Derek was staring at him with just a little bit too much longing. 'Stop that,' Stiles whispered fiercely.

'Stop what?' Derek asked, sounding a little guilty.

'Stop looking so... I don't know. Debauched. Was your shirt that creased when you got here?'

'Probably not, but that's not my fault.'

The front door opened.

'Hey, Dad!' Stiles yelled, sounding too panicked and loud even to his own ears. 'Derek's here. In the house. He's here. I'm making coffee.'

Derek looked like only sheer willpower was keeping him from rolling his eyes.

The Sheriff stepped through the door with a kind of wearily exasperated expression. 'Thanks for the advance warning, Stiles,' he said, offering Derek a curt nod. 'And to what do we owe the pleasure of Derek's company? Mortal danger again?'

Stiles and Derek exchanged a glance. John looked from one to the other for a moment, then groaned and took a seat at the table. 'Alright, tell me what's happening.'

Stiles did tell him. Kind of. With Derek's help. They both left out the bit about Stiles being gutted by Lisa because John didn't need any more grey hairs than he already had, but they made it clear that the O'Reilly pack intended to either kill Derek and his betas or run them out of town.

'We're going after them,' Derek concluded, as John sat looking stunned, his coffee untouched and growing cold. 'Tomorrow.'

'No,' the Sheriff said automatically.

'Dad,' Stiles said. 'This is pack stuff. It's important.'

'You're sixteen years old, Stiles! What kind of parent would I be if I agreed to let you get caught up in a... a gang war?'

'It's a territorial dispute,' Derek corrected. 'And if Stiles doesn't join us then the O'Reilly pack will hunt him down and kill him anyway. You too, probably.'

'We gotta do this now, Dad,' Stiles added, urgently, desperately staring his father in the face even as John refused to look directly at him. 'While we're strong. Before they get a chance to take any of us out.'

John finally looked up at that, the lines in his face pronounced with anguish. 'I won't let you do this,' he said.

Stiles clenched his jaw. 'Dad,' he said. 'You can't stop me.'

There was a sourness in the air now that Stiles could actually smell, and it made him sick to his stomach. John was looking at him as though Stiles had just stabbed him straight in the heart. They both knew that what Stiles was planning to do preyed on John's deepest and most terrible fears: of seeing a loved one hurt, and being helpless to stop it.

'Fine,' John said at last, unable to keep the bitterness out of his voice. 'I can't stop you. So why did you bother telling me in the first place? Why not just lie to me like you usually do?'

Stiles winced at that, but Derek replied. 'If you're willing, we could use your help. The Argents have weapons that can hurt werewolves, and the more people we have on our side the better our chances of survival will be.'

John shook his head in confusion. 'The Argents? But why would they...?'

'Oh!' Stiles cried. 'Forgot to mention. Argents are werewolf hunters. Probably good to know.'

' _What?_ OK...' John held up a hand, apparently deciding to accept the revelation for the moment in favour of asking more questions. 'And why the hell would werewolf hunters want to help werewolves?'

'Common enemy,' Stiles said, trying to sound more certain than he felt. 'Scott spoke to Allison, she passed the message on to her dad and he... well, he's not the friendliest of people but he can see reason, and he agreed to help out. Temporary truce, you know?'

John's eyes flicked over to look at Derek for a moment. 'I know,' he said grimly.

'Dad, you don't have to come with us,' Stiles burst out.

'But we'll have a better chance of survival if you do,' Derek added.

'Derek!' Stiles shot the Alpha an angry look.

'No, I will,' John said, as if there had ever really been any doubt. He was rubbing his fingertips slowly over the surface of the table, staring at it as though there were answers there. 'If Stiles is there, I'll be there, trying to keep you idiots from getting killed. Or killing anyone else, for that matter.'

There was silence for a moment as everyone stood waiting for someone else to speak, and eventually Derek broke it by clearing his throat. 'Good. We're heading out into the preserve tomorrow night. Get some sleep tonight and I'll come back...'

'Woah, woah, woah, you're not going anywhere,' John interjected.

Derek frowned at him. 'What?'

'You think that other werewolf pack's just waiting patiently to get ambushed? If I were them, I'd be ready to take you out the first time you set foot outside on your own. We're not taking that chance.'

'Dad...' Stiles began, but it was no use.

'No. You're staying here tonight, Hale, where I can keep an eye on you. Tomorrow we'll head out and pick up the rest of the pack and the Argents _together_. That way no one gets caught alone.' John seemed to have pulled himself together a little now, comfortable in the role of giving orders rather than receiving them. 'Stiles, you've got that sleeping bag for when Scott stays over, right? Set Derek up in your room.'

Stiles and Derek exchanged a long, breathless look.

'Sure, Dad,' Stiles said at last, his voice breaking a little. 'You're the boss.'


	24. Chapter 24

Derek took a deliberately long time in the bathroom. He used Stiles' toothbrush without bothering to ask and savoured the taste of him underneath the burning mint foam. The hand-towel had Stiles' scent all over it, and Derek washed his face just so that he'd have an excuse to dry it off. He looked up at himself in the mirror, almost laughing at how nervous he looked. He considered stripping to his underwear right there and then, just to save on awkwardness later, but decided that he didn't want to risk running into the Sheriff whilst half-naked.

Realising that he couldn't put the moment off any longer, Derek left the bathroom and walked down the hall to Stiles' bedroom. It felt weirdly domestic, as though he was part of the Stilinski family. It had been a long time since Derek had stayed in anything that really felt like a family home.

He opened the door and walked in, only wondering afterwards if he should have knocked. It didn't matter, though; Stiles was still fully-dressed and sitting at his desk, his face lit up by the screen of his laptop.

Derek closed the door behind him and stood there awkwardly for a moment, scratching the back of his left calf with his right foot. 'Hey,' he said.

'Yo,' was Stiles' deceptively casual reply. He looked up from the web page he'd been perusing. 'Feel free to use my toothbrush, by the way,' he said, the sarcasm evident in his tone.

'Thanks, I did,' Derek replied, straight-faced. He took a moment to enjoy the sight of Stiles' grin before glancing over at the bed.

'I didn't bother with the sleeping bag,' Stiles said bluntly. 'I figured we're sort of beyond that, you know?'

Derek cleared his throat. 'Yeah, I agree.' He looked around at the posters on the walls, and the telescope by the window, and at Stiles' bookshelves. He noticed with some amusement that Stiles had cleaned up his room while Derek was washing up, so that there was no dirty laundry lying around. He'd even changed the sheets on his bed.

Downstairs, not so long ago, going to bed with Stiles would have been... well, not easy, but not weird like this. They could both hear the Sheriff settling in next door, and Derek had no idea what Stiles was thinking. He was apparently willing to share a bed, but what did he want to happen in it? Derek had come there that night with a crazy idea to kiss Stiles and make his feelings clear, but beyond that he hadn't planned anything.

Stiles yawned so widely that it had to be put on and snapped the lid of his laptop closed. 'Right, time to get some sleep,' he said. 'Big day tomorrow.'

Derek nodded. Sleep. Yes, that was a pretty clear message. They were going to sleep and that was... that was...

Stiles took off his flannel button-down shirt, leaving only a white vest underneath it. His shoulders and part of his back and a little of his chest flexed as they were exposed. Despite filling out during training he seemed to be made entirely out of fascinating angles: the jut of his adam's apple; the points of his elbows; the slight upturn to his nose. He had a mole on his shoulder, a few more on his arms, one just a little way south of his left armpit - all of them clearly visible on his pale skin.

Without looking at Derek, Stiles popped the button on his jeans and sat down on the bed to pull them off. More angles and shapes: the line of the muscles on his legs; the delicate point of his ankle bone; the bend of his knees. His legs were lightly smattered with curls of dark hair, and Derek could spot a couple more moles on them as well.

Stiles threw his jeans over the back of his chair and sat on the bed, scrubbing a hand over the hair on his head that was starting to grow out, his body all pale skin and wiry muscles and hair and small imperfections. Derek was fairly certain that he had never seen a more attractive sight in all his life.

Stiles coughed nervously. 'You need to borrow some clothes to sleep in?' he asked.

Derek managed to unstick his throat. 'No.'

'Alright, then.' Stiles blew out a breath, and then seemed to suddenly realise that he was staring. 'I'll just, uh...' He turned away and climbed under the sheets, clearly doing his best to leave some room on the narrow bed. 'Turn the light off while you're up, OK?' he called over his shoulder.

Derek nodded, even though Stiles couldn't see it. He pulled his shirt over his head, took off his jeans and tossed both items of clothing onto the chair. He flicked the light switch and plunged the room into a moonlight-bathed gloom, then crept over to the bed and slid in under the sheets, being careful not to make contact with Stiles' skin.

It turned out to be a wasted effort. He was barely settled, holding onto the mattress a little to keep from falling out of the bed, when Stiles turned over and wrapped an arm around him, pulling him in closer. The beta hummed in happiness at the close contact with his Alpha, then sort of rolled half on top of him, rubbing his face over Derek's chest before nuzzling at his armpit. Derek obligingly tucked the arm behind his head to give Stiles better access.

'You smell really good here,' the teen admitted, his words sending vibrations through Derek's skin. 'Is that weird? I'm being weird, aren't I?'

'No,' Derek said quickly. 'It's the hair. It collects my scent. It's why werewolves like to smell each other's head hair, their facial hair and uh...' His voice trailed away as he realised what he'd been about to say.

'Downtown as well?' Stiles finished, and Derek wished he could see his beta's face.

'Yeah. And anywhere where the veins run close to the surface of the skin. Throat, wrists... you get the idea.'

'I get the idea,' Stiles affirmed. He wriggled upwards a little and pressed his face into Derek's neck, then slid the fingers of one hand down Derek's arm until their hands were intertwined. Derek tried to control his breathing.

'God, Derek,' Stiles whispered after a moment or two, his lips scraping against the bristles on Derek's throat, his voice shaking a little. 'Can we just...?'

Stiles didn't finish the sentence, but his fingers left Derek's hand, moved over his stomach and down his happy trail, down towards where he was hardening inside his underwear, reaching for Stiles without even trying.

The Sheriff coughed next door, and rolled over in bed. Stiles' hand froze.

Derek took the opportunity to regain control of himself, to grab Stiles' hand and bring it up to his own lips, brushing them over the knuckles. 'That's not a good idea,' he said softly.

'You don't want to?'

'No, I do, I really do. But...' God, why was this so hard to talk about? 'Stiles, when werewolves...' _Say it._ 'When we have sex, it tends to get a little noisy.'

'I'd stay quiet,' Stiles insisted with hushed desperation, freeing his hand and returning it to a spot just south of Derek's navel. 'You don't even have to do anything. I just wanna touch you.'

Derek struggled to control his breathing, his voice, as he replied, 'I'm not going to be able to stay quiet if you touch me.'

At that, Stiles actually let out a small growl of frustration. 'Derek, you smell so freakin' good. I want...'

His voice trailed away, too self-conscious to say exactly what he wanted, but Derek had a good idea. He wanted things as well: he wanted to roll Stiles over and - well, it wasn't a pretty word, but it was the most accurate - _mount_ him. His innate Alpha instincts combined with a healthy young libido and this bed that was cloaked in Stiles' scent were picking apart his self-control piece by piece. At this point he could easily manhandle Stiles into whatever position he wanted and hold him there, mercilessly wresting as many interesting noises as possible out of him. And there was the rub...

'You think you could keep quiet if we had sex right now, Stiles? You think I could?'

Stiles sucked in a breath and then let it out in one long shudder. Derek reached down and lifted Stiles' hand away from his abdomen, brought it up to his chest and held it there tight, rubbing his other hand over Stiles' back soothingly.

'You're 16,' he said. 'I'm 22. Your father, the Sheriff, is right next door. What do you think he'll do if he hears anything like that? And he _would_ hear it, Stiles.'

'I'll be 17 soon,' Stiles protested. 'And what does it matter? You've probably broken worse laws than this. Hell, we poached deer together, remember?' But the defeat was already in his voice.

'We can wait,' Derek assured him. To make it easier, he wrapped his arms tightly around Stiles and maneuvred him so that he was lying on his side with Derek pressed up against his back, unable to fight the Alpha's grip. He felt Stiles wriggle for a few moments before settling down, content to submit so long as he could maintain this closeness to his Alpha.

They had to lie there like that for a long time before Stiles ceased shivering with excitement and lethargy began to overtake him. Once his breathing began to even out, Derek indulged himself by dragging his nose over the hair on the back of Stiles' head and drinking in the scent of him deeply. It was intoxicating, and Derek felt suddenly and quite fiercely protective of his beta. He ran his thumb over the last fading lines of Stiles' wound and made a silent vow to himself that every one of the O'Reilly pack would lose their throats before they dared lay a tooth or claw on a member of his pack again.

* * *

The next morning, in the shower, Stiles scrubbed himself with the loofah until his skin turned red. He could smell Derek so strongly all over himself that he was irrationally afraid that his father would be able to smell it too, and absolutely certain that the other betas would. Stiles was still unclear on what Derek wanted out of all this - whether or not Stiles was allowed to tell anyone that they were... whatever they were.

To his slight disappointment, Derek wasn't in Stiles' room when he got back. Stiles had woken up first, to the very pleasant sight of Derek stretched out on the bed with one arm behind his head, the skin on his stomach shifting over his muscles as he breathed, his hair all sleep-mussed and his expression slack and soft. Now Stiles was left to dress alone and to follow the trailing scent of Derek down to the kitchen.

He had made himself at home and was cooking bacon and hash browns, dressed in the only clothes that he had brought with him. He hadn't showered and Stiles could smell himself all over Derek even from the other side of the kitchen.

Without turning around Derek said, 'Your father's at the station. He said we're to wait here until he gets back, and then we're going to pick up the pack together.'

'Good plan,' Stiles said. 'You talk to the Argents?'

The muscles in Derek's back tensed visibly. 'Yes. They'll meet us on the outskirts of the preserve at noon. I want to confront the pack in daylight, while the humans still have good visibility.'

'And in the meantime... bacon?' Stiles said hopefully.

Though Derek didn't turn around, Stiles could tell he was grinning by the way his ears moved. Derek flipped the cooked breakfast gracefully onto two plates and brought them over to the table, but he didn't sit down at first. He looked Stiles over, swiping his gaze over the fresh clothes and slightly damp hair, his nostrils flaring as he sniffed the air.

'You smell... clean,' he said at last. He didn't sound like he approved.

'Yeah, "Ocean Spray". That's what it said on the bottle. I figure it's supposed to sound manly but mostly I just smell like soap. I mean, who wants to smell like ocean spray? I've been to the ocean and it just smells like salt and seaweed and sewage and other things starting with "S"...' Stiles forced himself to shut up for at least two seconds before continuing, somewhat timidly. 'I just thought... I didn't know if you'd want me smelling like you or not.'

Oh crap, he could _not_ possibly have sounded more insecure.

Derek continued to stare at him in silence for a moment, and then he moved in: close enough that Stiles could feel the heat of his body, but not close enough that they were actually touching. Nonetheless, Stiles felt his heartrate pick up and knew that Derek would be able to hear it too.

'Do you?' he asked, deciding that there was no point in doing patheticness by half measures.

A low growl that really should have been illegal rumbled in Derek's throat, then suddenly his right hand whipped up and grabbed Stiles roughly by the ear. He gave a soft yelp, more out of surprise than actual pain, and then held still as Derek pulled his head to one side and shoved his nose bluntly against Stiles' neck.

He stayed there like that, just for a moment, breathing deeply. Then Stiles felt something broad and hot and wet at his jaw and realised that it was Derek's tongue, right before Derek dragged it slowly and messily up the side of his face - all the way up to his hairline. There was another deep rumble of appreciation, then Derek let go of Stiles' ear and took a step back, surveying him critically.

Stiles stared back at him, open-mouthed, and slowly lifted a shaking hand to touch the damp trail of Derek's saliva on his face.

'Ew,' he lied.

Derek bared his white teeth in a satisfied grin before saying, 'I hope that answers your question. Now eat your breakfast...' He paused, as though deliberating on whether or not to finish the sentence, before continuing in a slightly deeper voice. 'Before I put _you_ on the table.'

* * *

John leaned back against the car with his arms folded, surveying the assembled team of teenagers without much confidence. He had seen what these kids - these _werewolves_ \- could do in the full thrall of their second natures, but even so it was hard to picture them working as a team. With him present, they mostly seemed to be acting like they'd been caught shoplifting and were throwing him occasional nervous glances. Stiles was standing next to him, but John got the distinct feeling that he'd rather be with his friends. Meanwhile, Derek was leaving bootprints on the roof of John's car as he used it as a vantage point to watch for danger.

They were on the outskirts of Beacon Hills Preserve, awaiting the Argents' arrival. It was a clear day with only the barest of breezes, which Derek seemed pleased about. Something to do with the other werewolf pack not being able to catch their scent.

John still wasn't completely sure of this. His intent had always been to uphold the law, no matter what, and he was pretty sure that he was now taking part in vigilantism. But what could his officers do against a marauding pack of werewolves, other than die horribly?

Scott seemed to notice the tension in the air and broke the no man's land between the werewolf pack and the Stilinskis. He shoved his hands in his pockets and grinned awkwardly.

'You nervous?' he asked, leaving it unclear who the question was directed at. John glanced over at Stiles, who puffed out his chest.

'Me? No way. I could probably handle these morons all by myself. You guys are just here as window dressing.'

Scott grinned, but then the smallest puff of wind blew through the trees and past where they we standing, and John saw Scott's expression change. He frowned and lifted his chin and his nostrils flared slightly. He stared at Stiles in a manner of some confusion, and opened his mouth to speak before glancing over at John and swiftly closing it again.

'Problem?' John asked, a little sharply. He looked over at Stiles and caught the kid shaking his head urgently at his friend.

'N-no, no problem,' Scott said. He didn't look worried - mostly just baffled.

John cursed internally. He was nervous enough already, going into a fight against people that could tear him apart as easily as slicing bread, and now he was being kept out of the loop.

Before he could press Scott for answers, however, Derek jumped down easily from the oof of the car and said, 'Hunters inbound.' He didn't sound altogether happy about it.

Sure enough, there was a rumble of car engines as two trucks came sweeping down the road towards them. The werewolf pack, Stiles included, tensed visibly and watched the Argents' approach like hawks until Derek let out a low growl, presumably as a signal for everyone to put their teeth away.

The trucks parked up behind John's car and, figuring that he would be the best person to mediate this situation, he stepped forward. Chris Argent climbed out of the driver's seat of the first truck and his daughter emerged from the passenger seat, directing a smile at Scott as she did so. Tension temporarily forgotten, Scott grinned back at her goofily.

'Sheriff,' Chris said stiffly, approaching John with a reluctantly outstretched hand.

John paused for a moment before reaching out to shake it. He expected the hunter to do a manly show of squeezing his bones together, but instead the handshake was simply firm and businesslike.

Formalities out of the way, Chris' eyes slid past John and landed on something over his shoulder that, by the direction of the gaze, was probably Stiles. This was confirmed a moment later when the hunter continued, 'I heard about the change in your... family circumstances. For what it's worth, I'm sorry.'

John could have sworn he actually _heard_ the werewolves tense up angrily behind, but he kept his tone cool as he replied, 'Don't be. My family circumstances are just fine.'

Chris simply looked sad in an infuriatingly condescending way and gestured for John to follow him to the back of the truck. 'We have sniper rifles, pistols, machine guns - all stocked with wolfsbane bullets. We also have crossbows - the arrows are real useful for taking down werewolves. They can't heal so long as the shaft stays lodged in them, and the heads are tipped with hooks that make them painful as hell to pull out.'

John glanced over his shoulder at Derek. The Alpha's face almost looked impassive, but John could see an edge of red in his irises and his fists were clenched tightly. Feeling distinctly uncomfortable, and knowing that he was being carefully watched, John said, 'I'll just take a pistol. Hopefully I won't have to use it.'

Chris raised his eyebrows, but said nothing as he handed John a 9mm Smith & Wesson and a couple of extra magazines. He looked down at them, and then up at the three other hunters climbing out of the second truck and grabbing weapons, and realised grimly that he was about the only person retaining any hope of this conflict ending peacefully.

'Alright,' he said, turning on his heel. 'Here's how it's going to go down.'

Chris Argent and Derek Hale stared at him with almost identical expressions of surprise and encroaching indignation, but John ignored them.

'Werewolves don't want people to know about them - you - is that correct?' he asked.

Derek paused, then gave a stiff nod.

'Right. I'm guessing that would make things tricky, especially if the person who knew about them happened to be the Sheriff of the town they're planning to settle in. I'll go in first, explain that I could make life very difficult for them if they tried to move in here, and then...'

'Then they rip your head off,' Derek said coolly.

'Hey!' Stiles yelled, taking an angry step forward.

'You want me to lie to him, Stiles?' Derek asked, without looking back at him. 'You want me to cushion the blow and tell him the O'Reilly pack are going to be really intimidated by the big scary Sheriff?' Now it was his turn to look condescending.

'It's worth a damn try!' John said defiantly.

'No, it's not. Let me get one thing straight here: as far as those werewolves are concerned, you are not the Sheriff of this town. _I_ am. So I'll be the one doing the talking.'

'Screw talking,' Chris said dismissively, before John had a chance to respond. 'I say we sneak up on them and take out the Alpha fast, then pick off a few of the bigger betas and the rest will scatter.'

'Hey, I did not agree to an assassination mission!' John snapped in disgust.

'Neither did I,' Derek growled, rounding on Chris. 'Unlike _you_ , I'm not a coward who hunts pups for sport.'

A shouting match was clearly about to break out, but Allison quickly stepped into the middle of them with her hands raised. 'Woah, boys, boys...' She glanced at Chris. '... And Dad. Don't get me wrong, this conversation has been _really_ productive and everyone has good ideas, but maybe we should find a compromise?'

John silently instructed himself to cool off. 'Alright, I like the sound of that. What are you suggesting?' He held up a hand at Derek before the Alpha could interrupt.

Allison smiled at him gratefully. 'Well, since we have the advantage of a fairly still day, I think Dad and I and the other hunters should stay hidden and try to flank the pack. Keep our weapons trained on them and take out the Alpha if they try anything. Derek, you and the Sheriff should take the pack and confront them head-on. Let them know that you've got the local police on your side and that you're willing to fight. They might not be so fast to sacrifice themselves if they know Beacon Hills is going to be such a hard nut to crack.' Her speech completed, she took a deep breath, suddenly looking nervous, and glanced around at the three men. 'What do you think?'

There was a tense moment during which Chris and Derek continued to stare one another down, but John figured that this was the best they were going to get.

'I'm in,' he said firmly. 'Good thinking, Allison.'

That earned him another smile, and Chris relaxed minutely. 'Alright,' he said. 'That could work.' He nodded at Allison with a touch of pride.

Derek merely grunted and turned away, but John saw Stiles wink and nod at him, and figured that this was an affirmative.

Great. They had a plan. Now all they needed to do was take on a pack of werewolves and not get killed.

No problem.


	25. Chapter 25

John half-expected Stiles to stick with the pack, but instead the two of them walked through the woods together, hanging back a little from the other werewolves. Neither of them quite knew what to say for a long time, until Stiles glanced over nervously.

'Try not to get to close to them,' he burst out suddenly. 'You've got the long range advantage, with the gun and everything, but when it comes to melee they've got you beat for sure.'

'Thanks, Stiles,' John said, grimacing when it came out more sarcastic than he intended. 'You get into a lot of fights like this?'

'Nah, I've just played a lot of video games,' Stiles quipped. Powering straight ahead, he went on, 'If you see me go down, don't worry too much. I can take a beating nowadays.'

'It doesn't have to come to a fight, Stiles,' John said sternly. He glanced over at his son, almost taken by surprise as he noticed how much Stiles seemed to have grown up over the last few months. Abruptly, before he could stop himself, he asked, 'Have you ever killed anyone, Stiles?'

'What?' Stiles yelled, so loudly that a couple of the other kids turned around and surprise and Derek shot him a glare. Raising a hand in apology, Stiles whispered fiercely, 'Are you serious?'

John nodded, looking straight ahead. 'You kept a lot of secrets from me, Stiles. And from what I can tell you've spent a lot of time this year getting yourself into dangerous situations. I've seen... I've seen what your friends can do when they lose control and if you've ever killed anyone then I just want to know.'

'No, Dad, I haven't killed anyone,' Stiles snapped. He hesitated before continuing, 'I... I've been in fights where people have been killed but never... I've never...'

'Alright, OK.' John patted him on the shoulder placatingly, realising as he did so that there was more shoulder to pat than he was used to. Apparently the werewolf workout regime was working. 'I just wanted to ask. I feel like...

'... Like you don't know me any more?' Stiles asked, his voice subdued.

'You were a werewolf for three months and I didn't realise it,' John reminded him. 'I want to make sure I didn't miss anything else.'

Stiles looked down at his feet as they walked. 'Would you think differently of me if I did?' he asked quietly. 'If I killed someone?'

'Well, it would depend on why you did it. But I'll tell you this, Stiles,' John said, looking straight ahead. 'If things go badly today and it comes down to it, I want you to do absolutely everything you can to survive. Because I cannot lose you, kid. I just can't.'

Stiles looked over at his father in surprise, wondering if he had heard his voice shake on the last word or just imagined it. He didn't have much time to dwell on it, however, as Derek suddenly spoke.

'They're up ahead,' he said tersely, and John increased his pace to join Derek at the head of the pack.

True to his word, they had no sooner stepped into a small clearing than Stiles saw Lisa appearing from around the side of a tree ahead of them, stalking closer with a confident smile on her face. Stiles had never been less happy to be smiled at.

'So,' she said, looking Derek up and down. 'It's true, then. The Hale pack is gone. The Alpha mantle has fallen onto its youngest.'

'I'm not interested in being insulted or bargained with,' Derek said, his voice edged with anger. 'You can leave or you can die. Your choice.'

Lisa surveyed him coolly, all humour gone from her face now. 'I didn't want this to end in death, Hale. I scratched your cub to send you a message. Did it not go through?'

 _I scratched your cub_. John repeated the phrase in his head as he noticed Derek's shoulders stiffen in anger, and he glanced over at Stiles questioningly. For some reason, however, Stiles did not meet his gaze.

'Get out of Beacon Hills,' Derek said, his voice gravelly and low.

'I don't see any reason to,' Lisa replied. 'I have a responsibility to my pack. You'll understand that one day, but right now you don't deserve a territory like Beacon Hills.' She folded her arms. 'You still have time to run.'

Jackson let out a sudden growl and stepped forward, but not so far that he moved ahead of Derek. The members of the O'Reilly pack noted the action and John saw them tense up and ready themselves for a fight. This was about to go very badly wrong, unless he stepped up.

Stepped up and tried to talk tough to a group of creatures who could each rip him apart with their bare hands. How hard could it be?

'Alright, everybody cool it,' he said, summoning up his strictest tone and walking forward until he was exactly halfway between the two packs. 'Ms. O'Reilly, it's not just Derek that you have to worry about. I'm-'

'You're the little beta's father,' the woman interrupted, glancing over at Stiles before turning her frighteningly intense attention back to John.

His stomach turned as he sensed that her knowledge of their relationship could mean nothing good, but he did his best not to let any dread show. 'I'm also the Sheriff of Beacon Hills, and trust me when I say that I'm _highly_ selective of the werewolf packs that I will tolerate in my town. There's really only one, and it's not yours.'

Even to John's own ears it didn't sound like much of a threat, but he saw a few members of the O'Reilly pack glance at each other worriedly, and realised that his instincts must have paid off. Werewolves were not used to having humans - especially humans with authority - interfering in their affairs, and they were unprepared for this situation.

Their leader, however, continued to stare at John with a cold and calculating expression. At last she said, 'So, you're going to make things difficult for us?'

'Not if you leave,' John coaxed. 'Promise you won't come back and I'll guarantee you safe passage from Beacon Hills.'

Lisa raised an eyebrow. 'Safe passage? Really? No claws in our backs as soon as we turn them?'

'You have my word,' John affirmed quickly. He couldn't believe it, but this plan was actually working. This could end peacefully.

'Alright,' the Alpha said, unsmiling. 'How about a deal? We leave. We won't touch the Hale pack. But if a single one of them attacks one of my people before we make it out of their territory, the deal is off.'

'That's fair,' John said.

'Fair,' Lisa repeated grimly. 'Poor Sheriff. You still believe in fairness.'

She lashed out too quickly for him to react. Her face changed - eyes glowing suddenly red as her teeth extended - and her claws raked brutally across John's chest, knocking him to the ground.

Dimly, he heard Stiles scream in outrage, and the scream turned into something ugly and animal before it was done. A dark shape leaped over him as a shot rang out through the woods, and then everything was chaos and blood.

* * *

Stiles saw his father fall back under the Alpha's claws and his mind went blank. When he heard the wolf growl to be let out, he didn't hesitate - he handed over the reins with a simple instruction: _kill her_.

He thought he heard Derek call out as he bounded past him, but all he could see was the other Alpha as her face changed and her body grew and sprouted hair and teeth and impossible huge muscles: a picture of death gladly waiting to greet him.

Despite all Derek's training, Stiles would have been dead in an instant if it hadn't been for the sudden crack of a gunshot and the startled whine of the Alpha as a bullet slammed into the back of her shoulder. Almost immediately the wound began to fester and bubble, black blood spurting from it.

Stiles had his claws out and ready. As the Alpha reeled from the bullet he slashed at her face, at her guts, at every part of her he could reach. He sank his claws into her wounded shoulder and swung himself onto the back of the beast as it tried to finish the shift.

There were howls of anger around him and suddenly Stiles felt claws like razors slicing at his own back, tearing his shirt to ribbons and sending blood trickling down his back in warm rivulets. Teeth sank into his left thigh and tore away a chunk of flesh, and he felt rather than heard a deep roar shake the world around them as Derek unleashed his Alpha form.

All this happened in a matter of seconds.

Another gunshot snapped out through the air and Stiles felt one of the O'Reilly pack being torn away from him even as two more latched onto him: one gnawing at his shoulder and the other slicing at his heel. But the ghost image of his father falling under Lisa's claws was still burned into Stiles' vision and he expressed his rage and shock and terror in the slice of his claws through her fur. He sank his teeth deep into the back of her neck and let instinct take over even as he felt her pack try to rip him apart piece by piece.

Then they were gone: flung from his back. Stiles didn't need to look around to know that Derek was there and his heart nearly burst with pride as he heard the snarls and whines of wolves falling under him. He could see Derek on the edge of his vision as an enormous black shape, and he could also see the smaller forms of the rest of the pack as they threw themselves into the fray.

Lisa let out a bubbling groan and then collapsed to the forest floor in human form - unable to sustain the wolf under the double assault of the wolfsbane and Stiles. She twisted her head around and bared her sharp teeth at Stiles.

'You cheated,' she hissed. 'You made a deal... with the hunters. With the humans. You used... your own father...'

The snarl actually hurt as it tore its way out of Stiles' throat.

'Does it... feel good?' she asked bitterly, her eyes dimming. 'Your... victory?'

Stiles thought about answering, but he didn't. Instead he used his teeth and his claws together and roughly tore at Lisa's head until it finally came away from her shoulders.

The rush hit him almost immediately. At first Stiles wondered if it was merely triumph - maybe horror - but then he realised that it was something real and physical. Suddenly his many, many wounds ceased to feel like they were draining the last of his life from him. It's was as though a great bottomless well had opened up inside of him and his body was greedily drinking its fill. Strength surged through his limbs and the euphoria of it hit his brain like a firework, striking away his fear and leaving only a deadly kind of confidence behind.

Stiles was so giddy with the rush of it that it took him a while to notice that silence had fallen around him. Or perhaps the silence had merely taken a while to fall.

In the sudden absence of movement or sound, Stiles realised that he might be an orphan.

'Dad,' he said, the word muffled and animalistic. He swallowed hard, forcing the wolf down for the moment. 'Dad,' he repeated, scrambling off Lisa's corpse and across the ground to where John lay.

His uniform shirt was torn open and he was lightly spattered with blood, but now that Stiles could see without the red mist in front of his eyes he realised that it was not a dead or even a dying man who lay in front of him. In fact, John was sitting up and feeling tentatively at his chest, and as he pulled the tatters of his shirt aside Stiles caught sight of a dark blue vest underneath it, with deep claw marks raked across it. Apparently the Sheriff had come prepared for the worst.

' _Dad_ ,' Stiles said again, now injecting as much relief as he could into the word as he pulled his father into a tight hug, closing his eyes and feeling tears of latent panic spilling over his cheeks as he realised how close a call it had been. If Lisa had gone for John's throat... if she had...

'Stiles,' John wheezed. 'Ribs...'

'Sorry, sorry,' Stiles said, hurriedly breaking the hug but keeping one hand on his father's shoulder as though frightened that he might disappear if released.

Now it was John's turn to stare, though, and there was a slowly dawning horror in his eyes. 'Oh God, Stiles, what did they do to you?' he whispered. 'We need to get you to a hospital.'

Stiles glanced down at himself and realised that he was more or less drenched in blood from head to toe. There were long slices down his arms that exposed the bone in a couple of places, and his back felt like the skin was sliding off it. Yet even as he stared he could see the flesh beginning to grow back. He didn't feel like he'd just had an entire werewolf pack try to separate him into bite-sized Stiles chunks. On the contrary, he felt better than he ever had before.

The thought reminded him that they were actually lying on a battlefield and he straightened up slowly and turned around. He quickly sought out Scott, who was sitting with his knee in the middle of another werewolf's back - grubby but otherwise unharmed. Stiles could see some of the O'Reilly pack lying clearly dead on the ground, but Erica, Boyd, Isaac and even Jackson seemed to be mostly in one piece. But Derek... where was...

'Derek,' Stiles called out, his voice a little unsteady. He took a few steps forward and the O'Reilly pack -the ones who could still move and who weren't being physically held in place - shrank away nervously.

'Here,' came a weary and slightly slurred voice from nearby. Stiles saw a pile of three dead or dying betas shift and Derek stood up, torn and clawed all over his body. His jaw was dislocated, but as he stepped over the bloodsoaked limbs he took it in one hand and shoved it back into place with barely a grimace.

He looked down at Lisa's body, then up at Stiles with slowly widening eyes. He seemed to get stuck for a moment, and then looked up sharply.

'Everyone alright?' he asked. 'Sheriff? Isaac? Jackson? Erica...'

'We're good,' Scott said, swiping a hand over his forehead and glancing nervously at the O'Reilly betas, who were still stuck in some kind of stunned trance. 'I think it's over.'

'Not so fast,' Chris Argent said, stepping out of the trees with Allison and the other hunters close behind him. 'Some of them are still alive. We need to take care of them.'

Derek opened his mouth, but before he could say anything Stiles got there first. Surging with new and intoxicating confidence, he strutted over to Chris and lifted his chin in defiance. 'Says who?' he asked. 'Last time I checked, we don't take orders from the back-up.'

'Watch yourself, kid,' Chris said, with icy calm. 'If it wasn't for my shot, your old man would be dead and you probably would be too. No need to get cocky over taking out a crippled Alpha.'

It dawned on Stiles, quietly, just what the impact of his killing Lisa had been, but he quickly put the issue at the bottom of his priorities list. 'Whatever. You still don't get to walk in here and start giving execution orders. These guys are surrendering. Aren't you?' he finished, with a glare round at the enemy betas.

Siles could actually hear a powerful undercurrent to his voice, and the werewolves quickly bowed their heads and muttered words of assent. Chris Argent, however, looked far from happy.

'Look at their eyes, Stiles. At least some of them have killed innocents, and we can't just let them go free. It's against our code.'

Stiles looked around at the werewolves in confusion. Some of them had yellow eyes while others were bright blue, but he had no idea what that had to do with killing innocents. It occurred to him, briefly, that Derek's eyes had glowed blue before he'd gone in for Alpha red, but he turned the thought aside for now.

'I don't care what they've done. My dad's the Sheriff, and he wanted this done as few corpses as possible. I'm sticking to that.'

'Thanks, Stiles,' John wheezed, still looking a little winded by Lisa's attack.

Chris narrowed his eyes, but at that moment Stiles heard Derek step up behind him and warn, 'Don't push this. We outnumber you and I'm with Stiles. We'll decide what to do with the pack, not you.'

Stiles felt a roar of elation bubbling up inside his chest and swallowed it down. This was Allison's dad, after all, and if Stiles screwed up hunter-werewolf relations too badly then Scott would be the one to suffer. Forcing himself to speak more softly, he went on, 'Please, Mr Argent. There's been enough killing already today. If you let us deal with the betas I promise we won't let them hurt anyone else.'

Chris eyed him evenly for a moment, and then let his shoulders drop a little. He glanced over at Allison, who was staring at him pleadingly, and then finally said, 'Alright. But I'm holding you personally responsible for them, Stiles.' He paused for a moment. 'You'd better get used to that.'

With that, he turned around and walked back into the trees. Allison hung back for a moment, looking at Scott with a mix of concern and longing, but Chris called to her sharply and she reluctantly followed.

Breathing a sigh of relief at having one problem dealt with - and trying to ignore the bizarre sensation of his wounds closing up even faster than normal - Stiles turned around and looked over the chaos of the clearing. Pretty much everyone who wasn't dead was staring at him with a mixture of emotions ranging from shock and disgust right through to awe, and Stiles quickly sought out Derek's face from among them.

Derek looked neither outraged nor impressed. He held Stiles' glance steadily for a moment before speaking.

'Alright, what should we do with them?' he asked. After a pause he finished, 'Alpha.'


	26. Chapter 26

It was like one of those nightmares about showing up at school and realising he'd forgotten his pants. Everyone was staring at him and Stiles felt ludicrously exposed. Without even intending it he had gained Alpha status - he had _killed_ someone - and now he had two packs of werewolves and his own father staring at him expectantly.

'Stiles,' Derek said, stepping closer to him and looking him steadily in the eye. 'What do you need?'

Stiles looked around at the members of the O'Reilly pack. Some of them were being held in place by Scott and the others, but others were free and their eyes were starting to gleam dangerously. He knew what he must look like to them: a kid who had become Alpha by accident and was still totally green. They had been intimidated, but now he could see them calculating the ways in which they might get to him and rip the Alpha status away. Stiles needed to do something.

With a calmness that took even him by surprise, Stiles looked back at Derek. Quietly he said, 'Take my dad. Take the others.' He could see both Jackson and Erica were barely managing to hold themselves upright, so deep were their wounds. 'Take them to Deaton and get him to help them. Leave the O'Reilly pack to me.'

Derek inhaled sharply and Stiles heard a ripple of surprise go around the clearing. Scott was muttering 'no way' repeatedly. John, with only human hearing to help him, was demanding, 'What? What did he say?'

But Derek just kept looking steadily at Stiles. His expression was pained and he looked like he was about to object, so Stiles put every ounce of energy he had into firing a psychic message at Derek: _Trust me._

'Alright,' the other Alpha said at last. Lifting his head and turning around he said louder, 'Alright, we're getting out of here. Stiles and our... guests are going to hang back.'

'No way!' Scott said again, loudly and defiantly.

'Like hell,' John added, folding his arms.

' _Do it_.' Stiles said, allowing that strange and exciting new flavour of authority to seep into the words and add a growling edge to them. Scott blinked in surprise and even John looked taken aback.

'Well I'm fine with this plan,' Jackson snarled weakly. He was holding an arm that looked like it was barely still attached to his shoulder, and his face was very pale. Without waiting for a response, he began stomping heavily back the way they had come and slowly, reluctantly, each of the other betas began to follow him.

John opened his mouth to object again, but Derek had moved over to his side and laid a hand on his shoulder. He began muttering rapidly into the Sheriff's ear and Stiles watched as his father's expression changed from one of anger and disbelief to one of anger and reluctant acceptance. He didn't take his eyes off Stiles, looking torn, but reluctantly allowed Derek to guide him away.

Scott was the last to go, glancing over his shoulder with an expression of worry. Though he was some distance away, Stiles heard him mutter, 'I hope you know what you're doing.'

 _Me too_ , Stiles thought.

He turned his back on his father and his friends and on Derek and faced the O'Reilly pack as they began to pick themselves up off the ground. He could see that, aside from Lisa, three more of them were dead. There were five left and Stiles eyed them up carefully.

The older man, with the grey beard and sharp blue eyes, was nursing only a few scratches. There was a plain-faced a woman of about thirty, with tattoos winding around her bare arms and several bloody slashes across her face and stomach. There were two guys who looked like brothers - not identical twins, but perhaps fraternal ones. In their late twenties, maybe, with auburn hair and thick stubble on their clenched jaws. The final survivor was a lean, sly-looking man who reminded Stiles uncomfortably of Peter Hale.

Stiles was the youngest person in the clearing by at least ten years and he noticed the O'Reilly pack forming a crescent around him, just a little too close for comfort. A newly-made Alpha against five experienced betas? The math was not looking good for Stiles, and they all knew it.

He didn't plan to fight them.

Stiles lifted his chin a little. Despite being young and still kind of skinny, he didn't look defenceless. He was still covered in the blood of their leader and he knew that his eyes would be carrying the fresh crimson glow of an Alpha. Which brought him to his first question.

'Some of you have blue eyes,' he said in a level voice. 'Why?'

The O'Reilly pack glanced at each other, temporarily disarmed. That clearly hadn't been what they were expecting.

Grey Beard answered. 'When a werewolf kills an innocent, it leaves a coldness in their soul. So the superstition goes, at least. Those werewolves have blue eyes.'

'Why are we talking to this pup?' the tattooed woman asked fiercely. 'The others are gone. We should take him apart for what he did to Lisa.'

'You mean _you_ should take him apart,' Not-Peter drawled pointedly, giving Stiles a smile that made his skin crawl. 'That way you become the Alpha. Convenient, Talia.'

'She was my sister, you bastard,' Talia snarled furiously.

'Oh, and now she's dead you're suddenly full of affection for her?' Not-Peter riposted mildly.

'If anyone should be the Alpha, it's me!'

' _I'm_ the Alpha,' Stiles growled, and though he said it quietly the words lay heavy in the air, momentarily stopping the argument in its tracks.

'You ain't shit, boy,' Grey Beard sneered, taking a threatening step forward. 'You'd better just stand their quietly while we decide how to divide you up between the five of us.'

Like a flame with gasoline suddenly thrown on it, Stiles felt the Alpha wolf inside him roar and rage and bubble under his skin, demanding to be set free and to tear the beta apart for his impudence. He clamped down on it, though, and stared fearlessly at Grey Beard.

'What then?' he asked loudly. 'If you do manage to kill me - and I'd probably take a few of you out, even if I am young - where does that leave you? Shit out of luck, just like you were before you got here. Even if you do manage to make out of town before Derek and his pack and the hunters tear you apart, you still don't have a territory to call home.'

'I sense you're about to put an offer on the table,' Not-Peter said, a smile still playing around the corners of his lips.

Stiles eyed him guardedly. 'What's your name?' he asked.

'Evan.'

'Nice to se you've gotten over your grief so quickly.'

Evan shrugged. 'Until two weeks ago I was an omega. I joined the O'Reillys because I 'd heard they had a good reputation. Now I'm thinking there might be a better option.'

'You treacherous snake,' Talia spat.

'Want me to kill her?' Evan asked Stiles, raising an eyebrow.

'No,' Stiles said sharply. 'No one's going to kill anyone. Here's the deal.' He took a deep breath before continuing. 'There's room in Beacon Hills for a few more werewolves, but if you want to stay then you stay as my betas.'

'And Alpha Hale won't have a problem with that?' Evan asked, watching Stiles carefully.

'No.' Stiles didn't let his voice quaver, but somewhere in the back of his mind a small doubt began to niggle. He ignored it. 'He'll have a problem if anyone else tries to call themself Alpha round here, though.'

'You're wasting your time, baby Alpha,' Talia snarled. 'Evan might be ready to switch sides in a heartbeat but it's still four on two.'

'Woah, hold on.' It was the taller of the brothers that had spoken. 'You're not our Alpha, Talia.'

'They were your pack!' she screeched furiously, pointing at the fallen werewolves nearby. 'They were your friends!'

'Lisa got them killed. Now you want us to die for you? Fuck you, Talia.'

'You,' Stiles said, before Talia could respond. 'Your name?'

'I'm Eddie,' he said, a little stiffly.

'Earl,' the shorter brother added, without being asked.

'Evan, Eddie and Earl?' Stiles repeated incredulously. 'Oh my god. Actually, I'm not sure I want you guys on my side. You're going to be the dorkiest minion trio ever.'

It was one of those moments when he really should have thought about what he was going to say before he said it, but before anything else could happen, Evan let out a snort of laughter.

'OK, drop the "minion" bullshit and you've got a deal. If the twins are in, that is.'

Eddie and Earl looked at one another and seemed to communicate without speaking aloud. After a moment or too, Earl looked at Grey Beard and Talia almost apologetically.

'I'm sick of living on the road,' he said. 'Lisa talked up Beacon Hills way too much for me to turn this down. Listen to the kid,' he finished, pleading.

' _Alpha_ ,' Stiles corrected, a little indignantly.

'Repeating it won't make it true,' Grey Beard rumbled, staring at Stiles with open distaste. 'You ain't a real Alpha. I'm not joining any pack of yours. I'd rather be an omega.'

Eddie and Earl inhaled sharply, as though Grey Beard had just said a disgusting swear word. Talia was taking turns to stare at each of them with absolute venom.

'You're dead,' she snarled.

'Four on two,' Stiles said simply, repeating her words from earlier.

She looked like she was about to do just that, but Grey Beard lay a restraining hand on her shoulder. 'Don't,' he said gruffly. 'It's not worth dying for today. We can wait.'

Talia's eyes were glowing now, and Stiles saw with some relief that they were a deep golden colour. She showed her teeth one last time, then let out a growl of anger and stepped back.

'This isn't the last you'll see of us,' she promised Stiles with a glare. 'I'll find a new pack. I'll...'

'Yeah, good luck with that. Don't let the tree roots trip you on the way out,' Stiles interrupted, waving sarcastically.

Talia let rip with another deep and vicious snarl, but Grey Beard kept his hand tightly on her shoulder and held her back. He kept his cold, steady blue eyes on Stiles as the two of them stepped backwards, only looking away when they finally turned and began sprinting away, disappearing into the maze of tree trunks.

Stiles breathed a sigh of relief when they were finally out of earshot, and rubbed a hand over his face. His wounds were now almost completely healed, but he still looked like a mess.

It was Earl who spoke up, watching him carefully. 'Is there a motel in town where we can stay? Or a den? How are we going to...?'

Stiles held up a hand and was pleasantly surprised when Earl immediately stopped talking. 'Look, in the last hour I've killed someone, turned into an Alpha and recruited a pack. I think I deserve a bit of a time out.'

Earl just stared at him.

Stiles sighed. 'Follow me.'

* * *

It was midnight and Derek was still awake. He had made Isaac so nervous with his pacing and his short temper that the beta had made quietly gone to stay at Scott's place for the night. Derek knew he should sleep, but he still hadn't heard from Stiles. Not a word. The den was horribly, horribly silent.

It was also cold, thanks to the fact that he had left the windows wide open in order to better hear and smell Stiles when he showed up. _If_ he showed up.

Unable to bear the stillness any more, Derek let out a roar of frustration and kicked a chair so hard that it hit the opposite wall and burst into splinters. He stalked over to the window and glared at the empty street as though he could forced Stiles to appear.

Amazingly, it worked.

Derek smelled Stiles before he saw him. Actually, what he smelled at first was the strong scent of another Alpha and he stiffened instinctively before remembering that there was only one other Alpha in town.

Stiles was an _Alpha_ now. No matter how hard he tried, Derek couldn't quite make that sink in.

He saw Stiles turn the corner onto the street and quickly shut the windows and run a hand through his hair, breathing shakily as he tried to get his frayed nerves under control. He was already halfway down the stairs when he heard a sharp rapping at the door.

Stiles was on the doorstep. In his human form he looked exactly the same as he had that morning, but Derek could feel the difference radiating from him. The power inside Stiles was palpable, even as he shuffled his feet nervously.

'I didn't know if I should let myself in,' he said apologetically. 'Alpha etiquette and all that...'

Throwing his dignity to the wind, Derek dragged Stiles inside and pulled him close - not into a kiss, but into a tight and desperate hug. He buried his nose into Stiles' hair and nearly whimpered with relief as he detected that familiar scent under the layers of Alpha.

'Don't ever ask me to leave you like that again,' he said harshly, bringing his hand up to cup the back of Stiles' head and hold him closer. 'That was the hardest... Just promise you won't make me do that again.'

Stiles didn't reply (probably because his face was being crushed against Derek's shoulder), but Derek could feel the sharp points of his fingers as he hugged Derek back, holding onto him as though he was a lifeboat in a raging ocean.

Derek held him like that a little longer, smelling the faint traces of his own scent on Stiles from where he had marked him with his tongue earlier that day. He wanted to do that again, right now, over every inch of Stiles' skin - but first there were things that he needed to know. He reluctantly loosened his grip on Stiles and stepped back a little.

Stiles' cheeks were still a little pink from the cold as he shut the door behind him. He was hanging back and flexing his fingers a little nervously.

'The O'Reillys,' Derek prompted after a moment. 'Did you deal with them? Are they gone?'

'Some of them,' Stiles replied evasively.

'What do you mean?' Derek pressed.

'Two of them left,' Stiles explained. 'Three of them stayed.'

Derek stared blankly at him for a moment, unsure if he had heard correctly. 'Stayed? You mean, they're still in Beacon Hills?'

'I...'

'Wasn't the whole damn point of today to get them out of town?'

'It wasn't that simple,' Stiles snapped. 'I had to... negotiate.'

'No, no you didn't,' Derek said, stepping forward as he felt his temper rise. 'If you'd let us stay with you...'

'I had to show them I wasn't afraid of them,' Stiles said defiantly, folding his arms. 'I had to show them that I'm not weak.'

'Who cares what they think of you?' Derek demanded.

'I do! They're my pack!' Stiles burst out.

A horrible silence fell as the words echoed around the room. Derek tried to take calming breaths, but he could feel his temper slipping.

'Your pack?' he repeated.

'Yes,' Stiles answered firmly.

'And they're in Beacon Hills? You told them that they could stay here?'

'Yes.'

'And what made you think you had the right to promise them that?'

Things were turning nasty, but Derek couldn't quite force himself to care - at least, not enough to stop. His wolf was roaring furiously inside him, scratching at the cage of his mind, begging him to let it out. Derek could see Stiles trembling a little, as though he was going through the same struggle.

This was _his_ territory. Beacon Hills belonged to the Hales. And this brat, this minute-old pup of an Alpha dared to challenge him over it? Dared to grant sanctuary to some flea-ridden wandering mutts and then barge in here to boast about what he had done?

 _Get a hold of yourself_ , the human part of Derek begged him. _This is Stiles. Your Stiles. You know he didn't mean..._

'You had no right,' was what Derek growled, the indignation bubbling up through him and curling his lip into a snarl. 'Who do you think you are?'

Stiles looked like he was about to yell a retort, but then he took a deep breath and said, 'I grew up in Beacon Hills. Before that, my mom and my dad both grew up here. I have as much right to call it my territory as you do, and I don't have to ask your permission before inviting people to stay here.'

The calm defiance was somehow more infuriating than if Stiles had sneered or yelled at him, and Derek felt a full-blown roar escape from his chest and burst into the air with frightening volume. His claws were lengthening and Stiles was too far away and all he could smell was Alpha, Alpha, impudent Alpha, cocky Alpha, _enemy_ Alpha.

'Derek,' Stiles said, a warning tone to his voice as his eyes started to gleam red. 'They're staying.'

Derek transformed faster than he ever had before. He no longer had control. Fur burst through his skin and he grew in bulk, muscles rippling and enormous as his vocal chords shifted to make his next roar all the more animalistic and terrifying.

And then Stiles changed as well. He didn't even seem to think about it, but instead let his body grow and rearrange itself with a kind of grace as his clothes tore apart and brown fur grew in their place. His wolf stood on two legs still, balanced, teeth exposed in a warning snarl and his eyes red, _red_ , all Derek could see...

He couldn't hold himself back any more. Though something deep inside him was reeling in horror, like an owner tugging at the lead of a suddenly rabid dog, Derek leapt forward and slashed at the other Alpha, who ducked neatly under the claws and spun in a tight circle around Derek, forcing him to turn sharply to protect his back.

The new Alpha was fast, _fast_ , and Derek could faintly remember that this had always been his advantage in training. But he was young and still not quite used to his hugely powerful body. All Derek needed to do was keep him still, lock him down, then go in for the kill.

He struck at the younger Alpha and caught him in a grapple, flexing his muscles and baring his teeth and snarling fearsomely. The Alpha roared back in his face and kicked his legs, knocking him over so that Derek found himself temporarily on his back. He rolled them over and snapped his teeth furiously, but he couldn't quite reach the other werewolf's flesh.

Stiles kicked him hard and knocked them apart. While Derek was still off-balance he lunged forward and landed a quick volley of blows before Derek managed to twist around and sink his teeth into his shoulder, not deep, but enough that his nose was buried in fur and Stiles...

_Stiles. Stiles. Stiles._

Derek could kill him now, surely. If he kept biting, kept fighting, he could take this newcomer apart. But there was something holding him back and he realised quickly that it was himself, only himself, watching his own actions in terror and pleading for Stiles' life.

_Stop. Stop this._

'Stop it, Derek,' begged a voice, and it was Stiles. Derek realised that his teeth were buried in bare human skin, not fur. Stiles had shed his Alpha form. In the middle of a fight. Derek hadn't even realised that such a thing was possible.

There were hands framing Derek's face, pushing desperately at him, and Derek slowly lifted his teeth out of the young Alpha's skin, feeling Stiles' blood drip from his upper fangs onto his lower lip. Stiles was guiding Derek's huge, fur-covered head, and forcing him to look him in the eye. Not the red glow of Alpha eyes but a warm brown. His eyes were so wide, frightened and pleading.

'C'mon, Derek, stop,' Stiles said. 'This isn't you. This isn't us.'

It took an enormous wrench of effort, so much that it actually drained the strength from his limbs, but Derek forced himself to shed his fur and fangs. He shifted back into his human form and collapsed, weak and shaking, into the surety of Stiles' embrace. He could feel Stiles trembling, naked and slick with blood, but instead of attempting a killing blow Derek just pulled him close and breathed in deeply.

The scent of Alpha still lay over everything - confusing and enraging - but Derek could smell Stiles underneath it all and that was what mattered.

'Oh god, Derek,' Stiles said shakily. 'This is kind of inappropriate, but I really want to have sex with you right now.'


	27. Chapter 27

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning: this chapter is solely responsible for bumping up the fic's rating.

Derek's skin was incredibly hot under Stiles' fingers. The fur was gone and only small scraps and tatters of clothing had stayed behind after his rapid transformation. He lifted himself up on one hand, still crouched over Stiles, and used his other hand to wipe the blood away from his mouth.

Stiles was vaguely aware of the pain in his shoulder where Derek had bitten him, but it seemed less important now that he knew the wound would be totally gone within a few hours. The thing that really mattered right now was that Derek no longer looked like he was about to rip Stiles' head off, and... had Stiles said that thing about wanting to have sex out loud?

'Hey,' he said, making a mental note to install some kind of filter between his brain and his mouth. 'You still want to kill me, big guy?'

Derek frowned, as though even the mention of killing Stiles had pissed him off. Talk about mood swings.

'Um, if you're not going to kill me and we're not going to have sex, can you at least lend me some pants?' Stiles asked, feeling very conscious of the fact that Derek's knee was nudging at the underside of his balls.

'Just give me a minute, would you?' Derek said roughly, his eyes fluttering closed.

Stiles managed to stay quiet for about six seconds before blurting out, 'A whole minute, or...?'

Derek let out a short huff of breath and opened his eyes again, staring down into Stiles' face as though looking for answers there. He looked so lost that Stiles felt a twinge inside his chest and reached up to grip Derek's bicep reassuringly.

'I didn't want to challenge you,' he said. 'I still want to be in your pack. Could we...' He hesitated. 'Would that work? A pack with two Alphas?'

Derek didn't reply. 'Do you mean that?' he asked warily. 'You still want to be mine?'

'Well, I personally think that it's unhealthy to define any relationship using rhetoric with connotations of ownership...'

' _Stiles_.'

OK, maybe save that lecture for another time. 'Yeah, Derek, I'm yours. If you're mine as well.'

Derek stared at him for another second or two, and then a rare and slow grin spread across his face, baring his white human teeth. Stiles struggled to remember the last time he had seen Derek smile like that, and then realised that it had been on the morning after their first hunt. Unable to help himself, he smiled back in relief.

Now Derek was stroking the backs of his fingers lightly up and down Stiles' flank, starting at his ribs and caressing the skin all the way down past the naked curve of Stiles' hip and along his thigh. 'Did you mean what you said earlier?' he asked, in a voice that should definitely come with a warning label.

There was no need to ask what he was referring to. Stiles swallowed hard and said, 'Yeah.'

In response, Derek sat back on his haunches and pulled Stiles up with him. As though he had been waiting to do it his entire life, he spread his hands over Stiles' buttocks and lifted him into his lap, leaning his head forward and breathing very heavily against Stiles' mouth without quite touching it.

His heart pounding frantically, Stiles closed the distance, and tasted his own blood on Derek's lower lip as Derek stood up, lifting Stiles up with him. Stiles tightened his legs around Derek's hips and hooked his left foot with his right ankle to keep himself anchored.

His dick was hard and rubbing over the heavenly ridges of Derek's abs, but Stiles couldn't bring himself to feel self-conscious about it. Instead he entwined himself tighter around the other Alpha until his dick was trapped between them.

'Shhh, Stiles, shhh...' Derek was saying, and Stiles realised with alarm that he had been moaning loudly as they kissed. Derek didn't seem to be too worried about keeping the noise down, however, as the next thing he did was to move two of his fingers and dip them into the crack of Stiles' ass, pressing them against...

Stiles' felt his eyes widen and without thinking he yelped, 'Holy shit. Oh my god...'

'Oh my god,' Derek agreed breathlessly, rubbing his fingers as though mesmerised. 'I just want to...'

'I want you to, too...' Stiles gasped, as terrified as he was aroused. This was going so much faster then he had ever imagined it would, but he couldn't decide whether he wanted to slow things down and take time to appreciate Derek's body, or just - god _damn_ \- just sink down onto the hard cock that he could already feel brushing over one of his ass cheeks. The part of his brain that was anticipating how good it would feel started up an internal war with the part of his brain that was yelling about how much it would hurt.

Luckily for Stiles, Derek was the first to get himself under control. He reluctantly moved his hands away and lowered Stiles to the ground - though unfortunately only after Stiles managed to embarrassingly hump against his stomach a couple more times.

'Come on,' Derek said huskily. 'Upstairs, I've got condoms and stuff. We can... it should be on a bed, at least.'

'I'm not fussy,' Stiles protested. Right now the floor was looking like a pretty decent option.

Derek smiled, and kissed him, and laced his fingers through Stiles' as he said. 'Let's go.'

* * *

So, this was it. Sex. S-E-X. The beast with two backs. The Alpha Sutra. Not biology textbook sex or internet porn but the real shebang, in 3D and surround sound, for one night only. Well, hopefully not one night only.

'Stiles,' Derek said. 'Shut up.'

Stiles had been thinking out loud again. 'Hey, you're the one who called the time out. You should have known that I'd start thinking too much.'

'And talking too much.' Derek crossed over to the bed where Stiles was sitting with his legs over the edge and his fingers flexing anxiously in the sheets. Derek tossed a condom and small bottle of lube onto the bed, but Stiles stopped him before he could sit down, grabbing him by the hips and easily holding him still.

'Wait, just... wait,' he said.

Derek stared down at him. His eyes were very, very dark and his mouth was open a little, like he didn't realise it. His torso flexed almost self-consciously as Stiles dragged his gaze down over it. His nipples were small and a dark shade of pink, and his stomach muscles were thick and defined. A trail of dark hair started just underneath his navel and Stiles followed it all the way down.

This was something else that Stiles hadn't seen since the morning after their first hunt. Derek was uncircumcised and his foreskin still partially covered the head of his dick. It was, to Stiles' relief, about average in size, and textured with veins bubbling underneath the surface of the skin. Taking a deep breath, Stiles reached out and cupped the cool weight of Derek's testicles, lifting them gently before letting them drop as he ran his fingers up the length of Derek's penis. He closed them in a circle around the head and pulled the foreskin up a little more, experimentally.

At that, Derek let out a small, broken sound. Stiles looked up without taking his hand away, and saw that Derek's head was tipped back a little, tightening the line of his body.

'I can't believe this is really happening,' Stiles admitted.

Derek didn't reply, just nodded loosely.

Not wanting to wait until the last minute, Stiles picked up the condom packet and tore it open with his teeth. He slid the condom out with slightly shaking fingers and pinched the tip as he rolled it onto Derek's cock. He'd practiced this by himself, thank god, and managed not to mess it up.

Once it was on, Stiles slid his slightly slick fingers up Derek's arm, and then yanked hard so that Derek was taken by surprise and toppled over, rolling over Stiles and ending up on his back, on the bed.

Stiles quickly straddled him and pressed his hands down firmly onto Derek's chest. His wolf purred at the show of dominance, and Stiles saw Derek's eyes glow suddenly red at the challenge, a growl escaping his lips.

Stiles grinned. 'Down boy.'

By way of response, Derek reached up and grabbed Stiles' hair, managing to catch it between his fingers. It had grown out recently, enough for Derek to use it as leverage and pull Stiles down for a filthy, open-mouthed kiss. Stiles couldn't see Derek's other hand, but he could feel it scrabbling at the bedsheets, and then he heard the click of the bottle of lube being opened.

Stiles pressed his chest against Derek's and sank his own fingers into Derek's hair, holding his head and guiding the kiss. He growled deep in his throat as he turned the kiss more aggressive: biting at Derek's lips a little, licking onto the sweetness of his mouth, sucking on his tongue. Derek's bucked and tightened his fingers in Stiles' hair. It was as much of a struggle as it was a kiss, and it ended with Derek finally snarling and rolling them both over so that Stiles was on his back.

He looked up at Derek, whose expression was determined and horny and maybe a little bit pissed off. Stiles felt a sudden twinge of anxiety in his chest as he looked down and saw that Derek was stroking himself with his wet hand, _readying_ himself.

The sight sent Stiles' mind reeling in confusion. It was as though he was split into two people: the ferocious Alpha who only wanted to fuck and to dominate, and the nervous teen who was about to lose his virginity to an equally ferocious Alpha. The first half of him had pushed and taunted and challenged Derek, and now the second half was about to pay the price.

Derek must have sensed Stiles's sudden fright, because he paused for a moment, then took his hand off himself. He rolled off of Stiles and lay on his side, stroking Stiles' belly soothingly with his dry hand.

'Sorry,' Derek said quietly.

Stiles tried to laugh nonchalantly. 'What for? You _definitely_ weren't doing anything wrong. I...'

Before he could say anything else, Derek leaned in and pushed his nose against Stiles' neck, breathing deeply. Remembering their conversation from the other day, Stiles lifted an arm and placed it around Derek's shoulders, pulling him in. With a satisfied rumble, Derek dragged his nose down and nuzzled at the wiry curls of hair under Stiles' arm. He kissed the area, open-mouthed, then stretched up again and set his teeth against Stiles jawline.

A hot shiver ran down the length of Stiles' body, and Derek made a pleased sound and placed his hands on Stiles' waist, lifting him up and into his lap, sitting up as he did so in order to keep kissing Stiles' throat and jaw. Derek kissed his way down to Stiles' shoulder and then stopped and rested his head there for a moment, breathing heavily.

'It's not going to be easy,' he said, quite out of the blue. 'But I think we could make it work, if we trust each other.' He lifted his head and looked up at Stiles, who saw with some alarm that Derek's irises were glowing bright, Alpha red. 'Do you trust me, Stiles?' he asked.

'Of course,' Stiles replied automatically. He looked at Derek a moment or two longer, considered the question, then said, 'Yeah. Yeah, I trust you.'

Derek smiled. He lifted his head and kissed Stiles, who felt Derek reach down and grip his own dick tightly at the base, angling it up, brushing the wet tip against Stiles' left buttock.

 _Here goes nothing_ , Stiles thought.

It didn't work at first. For a moment Stiles started to think that it would never work, that it would never _fit_ , but then Derek breached him with a sweet, sudden and agonising stretch. Stiles let out a yelp at the sensation, and he heard Derek exhale what sounded like every last bit of breath in his body in a long and joyful sigh.

'Ah, _Christ_ ,' Stiles said, squeezing his eyes tightly closed as he spread his thighs a little wider and wriggled his back. He felt Derek lay down flat on the bed, with one hand still rubbing over Stiles' forearm in reassurance.

Finally, Stiles managed to open his eyes. Derek was looking up at him with a complex blend of emotions on his face. 'Does it hurt?' he asked.

'Dude, I don't even know,' Stiles said in a tumble of words, laughing and wincing at the same time. 'It's like...' But he couldn't articulate it, this feeling of impossible fullness and pain and pleasure all mixed up, so he gave up on trying to talk and instead tried rocking, just a little at first. First he leaned forward, then back and... yeah, back was definitely better. He braced one hand on Derek's thigh and used the other hand to stroke his own semi-erect cock.

Fingertips brushed over his knuckles and Stiles opened one eye to see Derek staring at him with a stunned, slack-jawed expression. Stiles obliging removed his hand and Derek gripped him eagerly, stroked up and down and... oh _god_ , his hand was wet with more lube and it felt like the best thing in his world.

At least, until about three seconds later when Stiles found the spot inside him that felt like it was working and bounced a little, experimentally, and...

'Ohhh yeah, that's it,' he said loudly, repeating the motion.

'Yeah?' Derek said, his voice low and eager.

' _Fuck_ yeah,' Stiles said, even louder, revelling in the curse as he began to move faster. His movements turned rougher and harder but it didn't mess up the sensation. Rather, the faster he moved, the better it felt, and Stiles found a joyful rhythm that snapped through his entire body, rocking his head back as sweat started to bead on his forehead, prickle in his hair.

Unable to help himself, Stiles began to moan loudly, then yelp with each downward stroke. The reverbarations of sound in his throat heightened the pleasure so he kicked up the volume, shouting wordlessly as he rode Derek with his eyes closed... Derek...

It was kind of shameful, but Stiles had been concentrating so hard on trying to find the perfect angle and rhythm that he'd actually forgotten about Derek for a moment. He slowed down and opened his eyes, only to find that Derek had one hand clenched in the bedsheets and the other covering his eyes as he lay with his head tipped back a little, every muscle in his body standing out and shaking.

'Derek,' Stiles gasped. 'You OK?'

Derek gave a small grunt that might have been an affirmative.

'Why are you covering your eyes?'

Derek let out a huff of helpless breath and dragged his hand up, burying it in his hair and looking up at Stiles with a rueful smile. 'Do you have any idea what you look like right now?' he asked.

Anxiety stabbed suddenly at Stiles chest as he began to wonder and his brain conjured up all kinds of unflattering images. What kind of embarrassing faces had he been making? How ridiculous must he have looked when he was...?

Derek took hold of Stiles hips, held him still as he sat up and slid his hands up Stiles' back soothingly. 'I didn't want to come yet,' he admitted, looking Stiles in the eyes earnestly. 'But the way you looked, and the noises you were making, I...'

'You liked it?' Stiles asked, his worries sliding away.

Derek let out a burst of breathless, ironic laughter. 'Yeah, Stiles, I liked it.'

They kissed, and Stiles felt that Derek was completely soaked with sweat, his hair standing up in spikes, and that he was trembling a little. He must have really been close to the edge.

Stiles shifted the balance of their weight, pulling at Derek's shoulders until he fell forward and Stiles found himself on his back, his head hanging off the bed a little. Derek leaned down slowly on his elbows and kissed Stiles' collarbone, then the taut point of his adam's apple, lips brushing at the underside of Stiles' jaw. He was being gentle, but Stiles could feel the tension in his body.

'Go ahead,' Stiles murmured.

Derek paused with his mouth against Stiles' shoulder. 'What?'

'You know what. Take what you need. I trust you.'

Derek was quiet for a moment. Then he said, 'This isn't about me, Stiles.'

'It's about both of us. As much as I enjoyed the free ride - and I _did_ \- I think I'd enjoy seeing you cut loose as well. Feeling that. Please, Derek.'

Derek looked down into Stiles' eyes, uncertain at first, then accepting. He sat up on his haunches and abruptly tugged on Stiles' legs, pulling him down the bed in one swift jerk. Stiles found himself being rolled over onto his stomach and then Derek loomed over him, teeth lengthening a little as he growled, 'This what you want?'

'Yeah, Derek,' Stiles said breathlessly. 'Yeah, I...'

'Quiet,' Derek said, using his knee to nudge Stiles' thighs apart. There was an interminable pause, and then Stiles was keening at the intense feeling of Derek pushing his way back inside.

Derek groaned as he pushed his hips forward, then leaned down and wrapped an arm around Stiles' lower abdomen and lifted his ass a little higher. His other hand came down and gripped Stiles' shoulder. 'Head down,' he instructed huskily. 'Ass up.'

Something curled, hot and tight, inside Stiles' belly. His wolf was growling threateningly at being pinned down and manhandled like this, but his human side found it profoundly exciting. He closed his eyes and buried his face in the sheets as Derek began to roll his hips, testing the position.

Though he'd been told to be quiet, Stiles couldn't help but make some noise as Derek hit all kinds of interesting spots inside him. He groaned and murmured encouragement, and Derek began to thrust harder. He gripped Stiles' shoulder and began pulling him back on every stroke, adding an extra punch to the pace.

'Oh yeah, like that,' Stiles whined breathlessly. 'Keep... like that, _harder_ , Derek, oh...'

A joyful snarl ripped its way out of Derek and he began to fuck Stiles in earnest, slamming into him with short, violent snaps of his hips. Stiles could feel the very tips of Derek's claws grazing his shoulder and realised that he must be partially transformed. Derek was also fumbling at Stiles' dick, pressing upwards with his palm so that it was caught between his hand and Stiles' belly, but with his claws extended he couldn't get a good grip on it without risking some very painful injury. Determined to do his part, Stiles reached down and gently pushed Derek's hand away, giving himself a few practiced strokes.

Derek didn't seem to mind. He wrapped his now spare hand around Stiles belly and spread the other hand over the side of his face that had been pressed against the bed, lifting Stiles up quite suddenly so that his back was plastered against Derek's chest, sliding in the veneer of sweat that covered them both. The change of angle made him cry out helplessly.

Derek pushed his mouth against the delicate shell of Stiles' ear and, with his voice low and muffled by fangs, growled, 'Say my name. Say my goddamn name, Stiles.'

'Derek!' Stiles yelled without hesitation, feeling his fangs extend and hair bristle down towards his jawline as he wolfed out in response to the sheer animalistic fury radiating from Derek's overheated body. 'Harder, please, Derek...'

With a rumble of satisfaction, Derek toppled over onto his back, dragging Stiles with him. Stiles was now spread out on top of Derek's body, with one of Derek's hands wrapped around his throat and pinning his head back in a way that stretched his spine deliciously.

Derek reached down once again and flattened his palm over Stiles' cock, sandwiching it in slick skin. 'Come on,' he whispered eagerly in Stiles' ear. 'I know you're nearly there, I can feel it, _come on_ , Stiles...'

Stiles was shouting now, or perhaps he was roaring. The window panes actually shook at the sound of it and he felt himself slide over the edge, his voice falling silent as every muscle in his body locked up and he stopped breathing, unable to feel anything but the way Derek was piercing him and the waves of impossible pleasure, the spatter and slide of come on his own belly. Derek had fallen silent too, but Stiles could feel his whole body trembling and a strange pulsing inside him as Derek climaxed in a long shudder.

They came down slowly. Derek slid his hand away from Stiles' throat and Stiles lifted his head, sliding bonelessly off to one side. His claws and teeth retreated again as he shifted back to human form. He was pretty sure that he never wanted to move again, ever.

Derek was already moving. He rolled onto his side and laid his hand gently, almost reverently, over the mess on Stiles' stomach. Then he slowly began to rub it in, spreading it over Stiles' skin.

Stiles wriggled and opened one eye to scowl at him. 'Ew,' he protested.

'No,' Derek replied simply, but he removed his hand and began thoughtfully stroking the residue onto his own chest and stomach. It was a ridiculously erotic sight, and Stiles found himself staring open-mouthed.

'So, um...' he said, with no idea what he was going to say. 'Thanks? That was...' What was that? And how soon could they do it again?

Apparently still in bossy Alpha mode, Derek rolled onto his side and slung a leg and an arm over Stiles, effectively pinning him in place. 'Sleep,' he rumbled, closing his eyes and shuffling his head a little closer on the pillow.

'Yeah,' Stiles agreed without thinking, but even as Derek closed his eyes in exhaustion and began to breathe deep and slow, Stiles took a moment to just stare at him. Derek's skin was still glowing from the exertion and there were full droplets of sweat on his face and in his hair. He was apparently so tired out that he'd forgotten to remove the used condom, and Stiles found that he couldn't quite be bothered to remove it either. Instead he rolled onto his side, pressing closer to Derek's impossible warmth, and let himself drift off into a blissful, dreamless sleep.


	28. Chapter 28

On the third morning after the showdown, John walked into Stiles' room and found a monster on the bed.

'Monster' probably wasn't a kind way to put it, and John would never say it out loud, but that was what he saw. It was too big - far too big - to be a normal wolf, though its head seemed to resemble some kind of mix between a wolf and a particularly ferocious breed of bear. Its huge muscles were covered in glossy brown fur and Stiles' bed was creaking warningly under its weight. It was asleep with its head on its paws, snoring a little.

John had pressed a hand over his mouth to keep from screaming. He was not quite psychologically prepared for something like this so early in this morning. Steeling himself, he lowered his hand and said, in as firm a voice as he could muster, 'Stiles, it's time to get up for school.'

The beast stirred, then let out a low grumble and turned its head away from the door. It was more or less exactly what Stiles did whenever anyone tried to wake him up, and it gave John confidence.

'Don't give me that,' he said, louder this time. 'Out of bed, now. And if you've got wolf hair on the sheets then you're the one who's going to have to change them.'

The creature gave a bone-chilling growl. It opened one glowing red eye to glare at John, who folded his arms and stood his ground despite every instinct in his body screaming at him to run away.

'I want you dressed and downstairs in ten minutes,' John finished sternly. He stepped back from the door and started to walk away, then paused and went back. 'If you could turn back into a human, that would be swell.'

He headed downstairs, feeling the hairs prickle on the back of his neck as he wondered whether Stiles would decide to express his morning grumpiness with his newfound claws and teeth. When he got to the kitchen, however, he heard the pad of normal human feet hurrying to the bathroom, and breathed a slow sigh of relief.

Eleven minutes later Stiles came down the stairs, dressed for school and looking a little sheepish. 'Sorry,' he said, before John could get a word out. 'I transformed last night and, uh... you know, all that fur is kinda comfortable. I know why dogs can sleep anywhere now.'

'Yeah, well if you want comfort you can buy a onesie,' John replied wearily. 'I don't know if I can handle waking up a three hundred pound wolf creature every morning.'

Stiles grinned and popped some bread into the toaster. 'Just think of it like having a pet. A pet son.'

'Are you house-trained?'

'Ha-ha.'

Stiles spread butter liberally onto his toast and began to wolf it down hungrily. In between bites he said, 'I was thinking of inviting the E Team over for dinner tonight.'

John raised an eyebrow quizzically. 'The E Team?' he repeated.

'Yeah. Evan, Earl and Eddie. My betas.' Stiles shrugged. 'I'm trying to make them sound less like a Cartoon Network show. I think the E Team sounds cool.'

John decided not to comment on that. 'So you want to invite them over here?'

'Sure. I figure I should try bonding with them a little. It's gotta beat Derek's approach of kicking the crap out of his betas in the training ring.'

'Derek kicks the crap out of you?' John asked sharply.

'Not any more!' Stiles replied in cheerful tones. He looked at his watch and pulled a face. 'Gotta go, school.'

'Fine, but you're cooking for the... for your betas,' John said, following Stiles to the door. 'I don't even know what werewolves eat.'

'I'm thinking... pizza.'

* * *

'It's just weird, is all.'

Stiles glared at Scott over the top of his Economics textbook. 'What's that? Speak up, Mr. Werewolf, tell me more about how me dating a guy is _weird_.'

'Not because he's a guy. Come on, Stiles.' Scott sounded a little insulted. 'I mean the...' Scott looked over his shoulder. They were in a corner of the library, attempting to study, and luckily there weren't many other students doing the same. 'I mean the Alpha-Alpha thing.'

'This from the guy whose one true love is a werewolf hunter,' Stiles reminded him.

'Won't you two lock horns all the time?' Scott persisted.

'Right, because we never did that before.'

'Well before Derek could have stomped you like a bug. Now the two of you are equal.'

'Physically, maybe. I've still got the intellectual edge,' Stiles said snootily, pushing a pair of imaginary glasses up his nose.

Scott grinned briefly, then his expression turned sober. 'How's the pack?' he asked.

It took Stiles a moment to realise that Scott was referring to _his_ pack. 'Uh, fine. I don't know them that well yet. I asked Erica to join up - keep the pattern going, you know? But she's pretty attached to Boyd and Derek and... well, maybe we'll all be one big pack eventually anyway. I honestly don't know how it's going to work out.'

'You didn't invite me,' Scott pointed out quietly.

'Your name doesn't start with E,' Stiles replied, before his brain fully caught up with what Scott had just said. 'Wait, you'd... You'd want to be in my pack?'

Scott smiled at him. 'C'mon, Stiles, we've been in the same pack since we were five years old.'

Stiles stared at him for a moment. Finally he whispered, 'That is the girliest thing you have ever said to me.'

'Screw you,' Scott laughed loudly, ducking his head when the librarian glared at them from across the room. 'I was being serious.'

He really was. Stiles didn't know how to deal with this situation any way other than making a joke, because Scott had basically just asked for permission to join Stiles' pack. Stiles was barely even used to the idea of having a pack, and now his best friend was going to be his beta? It was...

'I know it's weird,' Scott said. 'But I can't think of anyone else I'd trust enough to want as an Alpha.'

'You shouldn't trust me,' Stiles warned. 'You know I'm just going to use my almighty Alpha power to make you clean my room and get me coffee.'

'You can try,' Scott said with a smirk.

* * *

Things were definitely weird now. Stiles stalked onto the lacrosse field without consciously attempting to stalk, and he saw Jackson duck his head away angrily. With a jolt, Stiles realised that he could force Jackson to submit if he wanted to. He could force Scott to submit. He could dominate the entire team. He could be the star player. He could maybe even get a college scholarship out of this.

Except... he didn't really want to. In the light of all he had been through, being good at lacrosse suddenly seemed so trivial. He'd nearly died. He'd killed someone. He'd become an Alpha. After all that, his ability to whip balls around a lacrosse pitch suddenly seemed like such a little thing.

So instead of storming onto the pitch ready to dominate everyone on it, Stiles focused on his team. He still played brilliantly, but only scored a couple of times, instead choosing for the perfect moment to pass to someone else so that they could get the ball in the net. He managed to fix it so that even Greenberg scored, and as the practice unfolded he saw his team's mood brightening and their confidence growing despite the drizzly weather and muddy pitch. They weren't oblivious to the part he was playing - Stiles even got a handful of high fives and a couple of pats on the back - but they didn't feel useless in the way they might have done if he'd just done all the work himself.

It was just a silly little thing, that lacrosse practice, but for the first time Stiles started to really believe that he might be able to pull off the pack leader thing. Maybe he wouldn't do it in the traditional werewolf way (roaring at people until they cowered wasn't really his style), but sometimes tradition was overrated.

Stiles' spirits were dampened only by the fact that he hadn't seen Derek since the morning after... wait, that needed some capitalisation. He hadn't seen Derek since the Morning After. It wasn't deliberate, it was just that both of them had been crazy busy. Stiles had been texting Derek whenever possible, but he could smell the other Alpha's scent fading from his skin every day and it made him feel uncomfortable.

Then, as the practice drew to a close, Stiles caught the scent again: strong and sharp and new. He looked up and then scoured the area until he caught sight of a familiar figure leaning against a tree in the wooded area that lined one side of the lacrosse pitch. He grinned broadly and resisted the urge to wave.

'Bilinski!' Finstock barked, making Stiles jump a little. 'You get your foot stuck in the mud?'

Stiles glanced around and realised that the rest of the team was halfway back to the changing rooms. 'Uh... I'm going to do a couple of laps, coach. While I've got the buzz, you know?'

Finstock eyed him carefully. 'Don't usually see this kind of enthusiasm from you, Bilinski.'

Stiles held his breath.

The coach stared him down for a few long seconds, then his face split into a grin. 'I like it. Make it five laps.' He turned and began walking back to the school.

'Thanks, coach!' Stiles yelled after him, then took off in an inhuman sprint towards the trees, not really caring if anyone saw. He slowed down as he approached Derek - who was looking immaculate with his carefully tousled hair and freshly-trimmed designer stubble - and Stiles realised that he himself was soaked to the bone in sweat and rain and plastered with mud up to his knees. He slowed to a walk, suddenly feeling sheepish.

'I, uh... Hey, there, Derek,' he said, waving awkwardly and trying to keep his distance in the vain hope that Derek wouldn't smell how gross he was. 'Geez, you've really not caught me at my best.'

Derek didn't seem to agree. He dragged his eyes slowly down over Stiles' damp and dishevelled form, and Stiles heard a low rumble of approval in his chest. For a moment Stiles was actually, legitimately, temporarily stunned by the combination of Derek's appearance and Derek's patented "fuck-me" growl. He could feel his mouth hanging open a little and made an effort to try and close it.

Swallowing hard as Derek stepped closer, Stiles said, 'I'm... uh. I'm all muddy. And you in your fancy jacket.'

'I'll get it dry-cleaned,' Derek murmured, and then Stiles was up against a tree and there was bark scraping deliciously against his back and Derek's thigh was between his legs and Stiles was rutting into it shamelessly as he sank his fingers into Derek's thick, coarse, black hair and kissed him ravenously. He kissed him until he ran out of breath, and then just for the hell of it he kept kissing him. Light-headed, Stiles opened his mouth and Derek's hot, rough tongue slid inside. It felt like the most pornographic thing in the world.

After a minute or so of this - not long enough, at any rate - Derek pulled his mouth away a little and, breathing heavily, asked, 'How long do you have?'

Stiles glanced down. 'Right now? About...'

' _Time_ , Stiles. How long before your coach comes looking for you?'

Stiles was really not in the right headspace for practical thought, but he replied anyway. 'Dunno. Few minutes?'

Derek grinned with his big, white teeth. 'I can work with that,' he muttered into Stiles' mouth.

* * *

'So, what exactly are we doing?' Evan asked in his grating, sardonic drawl.

'We're bonding,' Stiles replied authoritatively.

'By sitting in a darkened room not talking to one another?'

'You're allowed to talk. I, personally, am planning to make this viewing of _Die Hard_ a quote-along.'

Scott threw a kernel of popcorn at his head. 'You'd better not.'

Stiles fixed him with a scowl. 'You can't throw popcorn at me. I'm the Alpha.'

'It was a food offering, oh Alpha my Alpha.'

'Movie's starting,' Eddie said quietly from his place on the couch next to his brother. It wasn't a challenge - none of them had shown any signs of wanting to overturn Stiles' Alpha authority - but there was a clear message of _shut up_ hidden in there.

It wasn't totally relaxed. There was still a humming vibration of tension as the pack bonds wavered uncertainly, not quite ready to settle in yet. But Stiles had taken care to order way more food than they could eat and had cranked the heating up a little and dimmed the lights for the movie. His instincts told him that werewolves were more likely to get comfortable if they had full bellies and somewhere warm, dark and secure to relax in. At least, that was the sort of thing that made _him_ feel comfortable.

Once they were a little more familiar, Stiles was definitely going to bring up the Derek thing. He knew that they can smell Derek all over him - smell him in the more-than-friends kind of way - and he had caught their questioning, slightly awkward glances. If he wanted to unite the two packs, however, he first had to make sure that the E Team were definitely on his team, and that they were past the point of second thoughts.

Stiles risked the occasional glance over at them, their faces lit up by the screen. He now understood profoundly why Derek had only chosen to turn people who were several years younger than himself, and Stiles still couldn't get over the fact that he was in charge of a bunch of older guys. They certainly weren't... OK, they wouldn't have been his first choice for a pack. Or his second choice, for that matter.

But Derek had once said that Stiles was the last person he would have ever wanted to turn. Look at them now.

Eddie and Earl let out twin barks of laughter at one of Bruce Willis' one-liners, hearing it for the first time. When Stiles had asked them what their favorite moment in _Die Hard_ was, they'd looked at him blankly and then explained that they'd never seen it. Stiles couldn't help but wonder what their lives had been like before coming to Beacon Hills.

The movie ended and Stiles put _Con Air_ on next, ignoring Scott's loud protests. They ate the takeaway food that was left over while they watched it, and halfway through the third movie ( _Point Break_ ) the betas just sort of drifted into heaps on the floor and couch and fell solidly asleep. Stiles tried to be offended on Keanu Reeves' behalf, but he could feel the pack bond starting to settle with a low, slow, deep hum. He thought wistfully of his comfortable bed upstairs, but in the spirit of leadership he slid down onto the rug and curled up between Eddie and Scott, feeling sleep start to overcome him.

' _Bodhi, this is your fucking wake-up call, man! I am an FBI agent!_ ' Johnny Utah yelled from the TV.

'I know, man, ain't it wild?' Stiles mumbled, before hitting the Mute button on the remote control and drifting off to sleep.


End file.
